The Council's Ace
by JonaBee
Summary: Come one, come all! See the amazing amount of screw-ups the Watcher's Council is capable of when they really put their backs into it! And to think, they aren't even trying! Includes running tally.
1. Chapter 1: The Chooser of the Slayer

The Council's Ace

Written by Weebee and Jonakhensu.

Buffy Continuity Checker: Jonakhensu.

Typist: Weebee (Mostly)

Disclaimer: We do not own Ranma One Half or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nor do we own any one-shot, or full magazine, crossovers that we may or may not include. Now, can I get one of those spring loaded stake launcher thingies from Angel? Please?

Continuity: This story takes place somewhere before Nodoka finds out about Ranma's curse, but near the end of the Ranma continuity, maybe Volume 34 or so. In Buffy, it takes place right at the end of Season 1.

Summary: Come one, come all! See the amazing amount of screw-ups the Watcher's Council is capable of when they really put their backs into it! And to think, they aren't even trying! Includes running tally.

Note: In case you can't tell, we don't like the Watcher's Council. Also, if you've come for a serious Fanfic, while there is potential for this to have some serious scenes, we suggest that you look somewhere else, as at least half of this is doing what seemed most amusing at the time. Other than the Watcher's Council, there will be no INTENTIONAL bashing... yet.

Chapter 1: The Chooser of the Slayer.

"This is a fantastically bad idea," Nodoka Saotome observed, as she sat in her living room, staring off into space while holding a small, glowing stone in her hands. Those had been the first words out of her mouth, as she listened to a group of several dozen people, all visible through a sort of mental conference call, and all seeming to sit in a massive black room, white lights shining up from beneath them. If she had seen the series, she would have compared the scene to SEELE.

"Do you have a better plan, Mrs. Saotome?" One of the people, a tall, British man in a suit jacket asked with his arms crossed over his chest. "We require our candidate to be as powerful as the last one. The situation she is caught in is far too volatile for us to have to retrain a new candidate in the time available, however we need someone who will be more willing to listen to our commands."

The auburn haired woman frowned. "But couldn't we just provide support to the girl already there? Surely the prophecy can be broken. It has happened before, or do you not realize that the end of the world hasn't come yet?" She was being, to her way of thinking, unthinkably rude, but the fact remained that these people, those who she'd agreed to work with, were once more hanging an innocent girl out to dry for little reason.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," A short, American woman said, shaking her head from near Nodoka's left side. "This outcome is the most advantageous we could foresee. especially on such short notice, and you, Nodoka, are the only one who's registered potentials of the power we need, even if they are all approaching the Cruciamentum."

Nodoka grimaced at that name, but nodded. "I suppose my group are the most likely to survive it," She admitted, sourly, and then let out a long, frustrated breath. "How long do I have to prepare?"

"Approximately twelve hours," The female who had spoken before said again, before a map of Tokyo and set of directions flashed up in front of Nodoka's eyes. "Please meet us in that warehouse."

Nodoka nodded, and the black room faded from around her, leaving her holding the glowing stone in her living room once more. Setting the magical artifact aside, she stood, straightening her Kimono, and fervently wished that her boredom while her husband and son traveled hadn't given her the damnably stupid idea to become a magic user.

Moving over to a cupboard on the wall, she rifled through it for a moment to produce a small binder, and opened it up to reveal small, neatly written profiles of all of the 'potentials' she'd been able to detect in the Nerima ward.

Several of the girls were easy to cross off her list. Though Kodachi Kuno had both the physical and mental fortitude for it, that was mostly due to the fact that her mind had already been pushed far enough that vampires would simply be another part of her existence. The blue haired foreigner girl, Shampoo, was almost exactly what she wanted, but she was also, apparently, part of the Joketsuzoku tribe, who would most likely sooner kill any watcher they saw than talk to her.

Skimming past the images of girls who had the potential, but not nearly the strength required, she came to the last three candidates. Staring out of the page back at her were Akane Tendo, her cousin Ranko, and Ukyo Kuonji.

She spent several seconds looking from one image to the next, but then sighed. She knew which one she should pick, but she was trying to deny it. She had seen the loneliness in the girl's eyes, the pain whenever their gazes met, but she also knew that Ranko was capable of breaking stone easily, yet she was also already as fast as, or faster than, a Slayer, and would do anything her 'Auntie Saotome' asked of her.

She felt disgusted with herself as she made the decision, but Nodoka Saotome knew what needed to be done, and Ranko, at least, had a decent chance of surviving the trials to come.

HR.

Ranma was nervous. This wasn't precisely a strange state of affairs, even if she normally tried to hide the fact from others. At the moment she was walking next to her mother, who had asked her if she would be willing to undertake a mission as a martial artist.

To tell the truth, given how much the other woman always harped on her being more feminine, she hadn't really known that she even considered the martial arts, but according to what she'd said, there was something happening that needed a strong practitioner of the arts, and the younger redhead couldn't help a surge of confidence as she'd been the first person that she'd approached.

Of course, this meant that she would have to pretend to be Ranko for quite a while, given that her mother said the task could take weeks, or even months, but she could sneak off to change back into a guy and wander around every once in a while, so it probably wouldn't be that bad. For a moment, a small smile crossed her face. Perhaps, during the trip, she could find a way to get rid of the curse entirely and be able to tell her mother who she was.

Shaking her head, she pulled herself back to reality, noting that she'd slowed down and Nodoka was several feet in front of her. Lengthening her strides and cursing her short stature, she caught back up. "So, where are we going?" She asked.

Nodoka didn't respond right away, looking down at a small paper in her hands before turning down a side street. Ranma noted that they were exiting Nerima's city limits, and entering the more spread out area surrounding it. Of course, since it was Tokyo, that just meant that most of the roads were passable for cars, and you could see about fifty meters without a building being in the way outside of a park. "There it is," the older woman finally said, pointing ahead of the two towards a large, dingy looking warehouse that probably should have been condemned years ago.

Ranma grinned and cracked her knuckles. "Okay, who's set this one up?" She asked, casually.

"Hmm?" Nodoka asked, confused.

"Um, we are going to a pit fight, right?" Ranma asked, looking at her mother in a state of confusion. "Please tell me it ain't those idiot Yakuza again. They weren't a challenge at all."

Nodoka looked at the younger girl, somewhat disturbed. "No, we aren't going to a pit fight," She said, a little more sharply than she meant to. Though, she supposed, being used like that did somewhat explain Ranko's rougher edges. "We are not here to fight anyone. Follow me, please."

Ranma shrugged and walked behind her mother, walking into the building and slowly sweeping it with both her eyes and her chi sense. She didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Well, there was a group of six people deeper inside who resonated with something she couldn't quite identify as life force, but, in all honesty, that was perfectly ordinary for her. "Auntie Nodoka, you got friends in here?" She asked, entering a defensive stance and stepping in front of the older woman.

"That's 'do you have,' Ranko dear," Nodoka corrected, gently pushing the girl out of the way and walking deeper into the building. Ranma looked apprehensively at her mothers kimono covered back, but followed her until the two entered a large room which looked about as out of place in the middle of a warehouse as you could possibly get.

There were large wall sconces, lighting the room with flickering torch light, and several rune inscribed columns set up around what looked like a pentagram that had been laid into the floor in silver. Honestly, the place looked like the headquarters of a cult that Genma had sold him to when he was twelve, which only made the redhead's danger sense start buzzing steadily in the back of her brain. The six people she had sensed earlier were kneeling around the central area, murmuring something in a language she couldn't understand.

"This place doesn't look friendly," The redhead muttered, her eyes flickering around for the quickest escape route.

Nodoka frowned as she saw the look in Ranko's eyes. She knew what was required for the ceremony, as she'd gotten the instructions to act as its head priestess, but she also knew that it would likely freak the girl out. "Ranko-chan, don't worry. You'll be all right," She said, laying a hand on the tensing girl's shoulder.

"What's goin on here, Auntie," The redhead demanded. "This don't look like martial arts stuff ta me."

"Saotome-san, is this your candidate?" One of the six people who were setting up the circle asked, after standing and wiping his hands down his robes. He'd said it in English, which he hoped the girl wouldn't understand, but judging by the fact that the girl's eyes instantly tracked to him, that was apparently a forlorn hope.

"Yes, Samuels-san, this is her," Nodoka said, before sighing. Seeing Ranko's confusion, she turned to her and explained. "I wasn't entirely truthful to you at the Dojo," she admitted. "I asked you to come here because you were the best candidate among the girls of Nerima for a spell we were going to be casting."

Ranma backed up, looking at her mother in shock. "Hey, you ain't summoning a Shikima or somethin, are ya?" She demanded, a horrified look crossing her face. She could still occasionally feel the slime from the last one she'd had to break in half, and really didn't want to think of her mother being involved with that sort of thing.

"What?! NO!" Nodoka yelled, her composure almost completely shattered by that, while several of the people behind her looked decidedly confused and decided to look it up later. "No, nothing like that. We're trying to focus the reincarnation of something called the Slayer Spirit."

"The what?" Ranma asked, blinking.

Before Nodoka could answer, the man who had spoken earlier chimed in again. "The Slayer. Into each generation a Slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires and other demons." He said, reciting the canned Watcher speech absolutely perfectly.

Ranma took a second to translate it from the oddly accented English, and then blinked. "And what do I got ta do with this?" She asked, evenly.

"That's 'do I have to do,' Ranko, dear," Nodoka said, gently correcting the girl again. "As for what you have to do with this, the Watcher's Council felt that it would be best to select a well trained young woman to undertake the title, rather than the random selection that has occurred in the past. Many Slayers have died because, when they awoke, they were not powerful enough to fight their enemies."

"Erm, yeah, that's great," Ranma muttered, looking nervously at her mother. "So, um, it's gotta be a girl?" She asked.

Nodoka nodded. "All Slayers are female," she confirmed.

The younger redhead's eyes flicked from her mother's expectant face to the ritual circle and back, her mind's rather rusty gears churning into action. She really didn't want to know what this slayer thing would do to her, given her curse, if she tried it, but she couldn't tell her mother about the curse or she would probably get her stomach cut open, then her head cut off. Unfortunately, she couldn't really think of a reason not to accept, other than the obvious and unacceptable.

If what had been told to her was correct, most of the Slayers in the past had been random, innocent girls, and one of the core tenants of the Anything Goes was to help the innocent, even if she hadn't had much of a chance to do so yet.

Somewhere, Happosai and Genma Saotome couldn't help but feel that someone had totally missed the point. They assumed that, as usual, it had been Ranma.

"Um, I... Are you sure... Am I?" The pigtailed martial artist started to babble, desperately looking for a way out of her current situation. hearing the obvious apprehension in her voice, her mother turned to her and looked into her eyes.

"Ranko-chan, I know you're uncertain, but this is very important," the woman said, clasping the younger girl's small hands in hers and looking into her eyes, trying to convey caring and reassurance.

"Um, yeah... but..." Ranma said, and just for a moment, wanted to laugh. There was a decent chance that if she became this 'Slayer,' her curse would be locked, or something even weirder would happen, and her MOTHER, of all people, was begging her to do it.

Then again, it wasn't guaranteed that anything would happen to her at all, or that, if it did, it would necessarily lock her. Sighing, she nodded. "All right," she said. "What do I gotta do?"

Nodoka smiled widely, too relieved and happy to bother correcting the girl's grammar. "Thank you so much, Ranko-chan," she said, hugging the girl tightly.

"Yeah, no problem," the martial artist said.

HR.

"Ranma sat in the middle of a pentagram, her knees sending her distinct signals that they had fallen asleep several hours ago, and that she really should get off of them. Unfortunately, this wasn't possible, as she'd been informed that she had to stay still in order to let the spell go off without a hitch.

She wasn't entirely sure what the people casting the spell, and therefore she herself, were waiting for, but she wished that it would hurry up already. Given her incredible amount of stamina, the fact that she'd been awake for well over twenty hours wasn't the problem. The problem was also due to that same stamina though, in that she desperately wanted to bounce off of the walls with the restrained energy she currently felt. That, of course, was when she didn't let herself think about her desperate need to go to the bathroom, which had been getting worse since about the sixth hour in, but given she'd managed to hold it for thirty-six hours once, that wasn't her biggest issue.

For a moment, she allowed herself to close her eyes, constructing a scenario in her mind in which she, Ryoga, Mousse, Cologne, Happosai, and Herb were all in a massive battle over something she couldn't quite remember.

A small smile came to her lips as she started plotting out the most likely strategies each fighter would use, but it quickly dissipated as a chi attack from Herb managed to knock her into next week while she was in a grapple with Ryoga. She hated when her dreams obeyed logic. Damn mental tactics training.

Editing the Musk prince out of the equation, she lasted a lot longer, before Happosai slammed into her back, causing her to be unable to avoid a staff strike to the chest which caused unpleasant results. Just as she was about to edit the old man out and try again, she heard activity and opened her eyes to see that the six British guys in robes were bustling around her, and her mother was standing over her with a book in one hand and a vial of something in the other. 'I really hope that's cold,' she thought distantly, as the chanting began.

HR.

"And by the way..." Buffy Summers heard, as she could still feel the stinging of the bite marks on her neck. At the moment, only one thing ran through her mind. She had lost. She had lost spectacularly, and the 'Master' felt the need to gloat about it, rather than just finishing her off.

She got her wish, however, when she fell face forward into a puddle of water, unable to move a single muscle. "I like your dress," He said, before she saw glittering light refracted through the water she was staring, unblinking, into.

She felt her next breath take in water rather than air, it running down her throat and directly into her lungs, no sign of even a gag reflex to stop it. Time seemed to slow as her vision greyed, and then faded to black.

"Am I dead?" She thought, briefly, as a myriad of tiny lights flickered through the darkness, and an image began to form. She was suddenly floating. First, above her body, and then quickly away from it, to take in all of Sunnydale, and then California. Her view suddenly jerked sideways, harshly and unevenly, as if she were being pulled in one direction while trying to go another.

Though her geography was pretty rusty, given that she hadn't gone to that class in years, she recognized the outline of the three large islands of Japan. From there, things began to speed up dramatically, as she swooped down towards one of the islands, into a city, and down towards a seedy looking warehouse.

As she sped through the roof and caught a glimpse of several dark robed people surrounding a girl who looked about her age, she suddenly felt a painful stabbing in her chest. For a brief, startling moment, she caught a glimpse of a misty plain and three shadowed figures, before her eyes flew open, and she was staring up into Xander's worried face.

"Xander?" She asked, confused.

"Welcome back," He said with a relieved smile.

"Remind me never to eat tacos before dieing ever again," She quipped, and the two shared a small, semi-hysterical laugh.

HR.

The misty shadows were broken by a thunderous seeming burst of white light, as Nodoka watched the dreamscape that was taking form before her. There, she could see Ranko, standing nervously, as well as what looked like an extremely large hunting cat.

Neither of the other two were looking at her, but rather staring at the large energy sphere that hovered between the three, lashing out with tendrils of black energy, shot through with bolts of red lightning.

She continued the chant that she had started earlier, having not precisely expected to be pulled into Ranko's mind, or wherever she was, but not letting it get to her, as any lapse of concentration on her part could have disastrous results. Watching, she saw the blackness move to the crouching animal nearby, and briefly run a part of itself over its back and flanks.

The cat let out a thunderous purr, slumping from a defensive crouch to a relaxed sprawl, and the energy moved on to Ranko herself, beginning to engulf her. As it did so, however, Nodoka felt a spike of power which almost gave her the impression of rage, and Ranko began to convulse.

As she watched, the girl started to twist and bend, reshaping herself into a taller, more muscular form for a second, her face obscured by the red lightning that crackled around her. Abruptly, she shifted back, and began to spasm violently, streams of blue starting to mesh with the demonic looking aura that surrounded her.

The girl's teeth were clenched, her face locked into a rictus of pain, but she kept herself from screaming. Nodoka wondered if this was what it was like for all Slayers upon awakening, but shook her head. She had never heard any descriptions of anything like this before, and though the High Council didn't tell her everything, she was sure that they would have told her this.

The blue light amongst the black and red started to get brighter, and eventually Ranko's clenched teeth opened to give a scream of near complete and total agony, the cat that had once been relaxed suddenly bolting to its feet, its ears laid back.

Closing her eyes tightly, Nodoka tried to block out the girl's screams, but as she did so she saw her at the Tendo Dojo's living room table, smiling up at Auntie Nodoka, and showing off a plate of food she'd just made.

Cursing herself, she deliberately broke the chant, and the mental landscape faded away to reveal the inside of the warehouse, where Ranko was writhing on the floor, having managed to claw several pieces of the silver pentagram she'd been laying in out of the ground. Nodoka started to run over to her, when a shaft of alternating blue, black and red energy erupted from the younger girl's body and passed through the roof without leaving a mark.

Taking only another second to see if there would be another outburst, the Saotome matriarch ran over to the girl who lay in the middle of the floor, lifting her head to see that her teeth were clenched so tightly that at least one had cracked, and her eyes were watering.

"Ranko-chan, are you all right?" The auburn haired woman asked, concerned.

"Think... I finally found somethin that hurt worse than the Neko-ken," The girl muttered, dazedly.

"The what?" Nodoka asked, confused, but Ranma shook her head.

"Don't worry about it," she mumbled. "Can I move now?"

Nodoka nodded, and her charge struggled to her feet, looking around the circle of mages. "Any of you know where there's a bathroom 'round here?" She asked in lightly accented English, being lead away by one of the robed men.

Another took a small talisman out from under his robe, studying it for a moment as he pointed it at the leaving redhead. As it glowed bright red, he nodded to himself. "She is definitely the Slayer," he confirmed.

Nodoka nodded reluctantly, looking after the Tendo girl.

"We should still try the other tests. That amulet's been known to give false positives before," Samuels decided, walking to the back of the room and producing several small items, and a steel bar about a foot long.

HR.

Roger Zabuto sat reading a large, dusty looking tome at the edge of the school gymnasium, as, nearby, a young girl ran quickly through a series of fighting movements, the stake in her left hand flashing out in a slow, practiced motion every few seconds, and the axe in her right swinging out at what would be neck level to the average American male.

He looked up at her as her foot made an unusually loud thumping sound on the floor, noting that she'd fumbled one step in the movements, and frowned. "Again," He said, quietly, and Kendra Young nodded, beginning again.

He returned to his book for a few more moments, before he heard another thump, and he looked over to see Kendra on the floor, her eyes staring unfocussed into the beams of the ceiling.

"Kendra?" He asked, putting the book down and standing to walk over to his potential. He didn't think he'd been pushing her hard enough for her to faint like that, as he'd realized her limits and tried to keep to them, but she looked very much out of it. "Are you all right? You aren't done training yet, you know."

The dark skinned woman didn't respond, still gazing into the rafters.

"Kendra, please, this is childish," the man scolded, bending down to check her pulse even so, and noticing that her eyes were glowing an odd blue color. Just as he was about to shake her shoulder, the girl shot up to a sitting position and blinked rapidly. "What was that about?" The man asked, irritated.

"I..." Kendra said, slowly, and then her mouth slit into an odd grin. "I don't know, but I feel really..." She promptly jumped to her feet, and began running through her previous motions incredibly quickly, her Watcher only having a moment to step out of the way. "I feel really good!" She said, letting out a loud, long laugh, and flipping backwards to land on her feet, her arms out-stretched.

Roger blinked several times, staring at the girl in complete and total confusion. "Did you hit your head too hard when you fell?" He asked, while reaching for a knife.

HR.

Ranma was, quite frankly, more relieved than he had been after the fight with Herb as he looked into the mirror at his male face. His curse hadn't been locked, and as far as he could tell, he was no worse off at the moment than he had been before the start of the ritual. Granted, something seemed a little off, but he thought that that was most likely due to the fact that he'd been turned into the Slayer, or whatever it was.

Splashing himself with cold water to shift into his cursed form once again, she opened the bathroom door, and her danger sense flared. Without thinking, she tracked the danger back to its source, just as she saw someone letting a knife fly towards her head.

She started to move her hand to pluck the blade out of the air, but noticed that it was responding much more slowly than she was used to, and threw herself sideways, the knife slamming into the wall behind her and embedding itself in the tile.

"Hm, rather slow," the knife's thrower commented, "but good reflexes none the less."

Recovering her balance by bouncing off of the door frame, and not seeming to hear what was just said, the redhead launched herself forward, catching him in the middle of the torso, and knocking him backwards to the floor.

"All right, I'm sorry, you're not slow!" The man said, as her fist was raised to knock him unconscious.

"Ranko, dear, you don't have to do that," Nodoka said, and the redhead stopped her fist in mid-motion, getting up off of the man and offering a hand to help him up.

"Sorry 'bout that," She responded, and the Watchers made a note of how quickly she obeyed her handler, not really realizing that having knives thrown at her head by people she regarded as casual annoyances was rather routine for the girl.

"So, should we move to the next test?" Samuels asked, watching what had just happened with a dubious look on his face.

"Test?" Ranma asked, looking at Nodoka questioningly.

"Yes, dear. they want to know if the ritual worked," Nodoka explained, though she kept to herself that she thought most of the normal slayer tests would have been easy to perform for Ranko even before.

"Oh, um, sure," The redhead shrugged, walking into the ritual room again, where she was promptly handed a metal bar.

"Bend this," Samuels ordered.

Much to his surprise, the girl didn't look at him as though he were insane for the suggestion, merely looking down at the bar and concentrating. She flexed her hands, and her face gained a puzzled look as nothing happened.

Several seconds later, the bar started to slowly bend, until it was finally the shape of a horse shoe. Dropping it to the ground, the redhead gasped and began to rub at her wrist, then rubbed a sheen of sweat off of her forehead.

Nodoka threw a strange look at the young martial artist, wondering what she was trying to pull, but Ranko's expression startled her. She was stuck half way between confused and scared.

"Don't worry, that strength is about normal for a Slayer," Samuels explained, patting Ranma on the shoulder. "It looks like the spell was a success."

"Um, yeah," Ranma said, her expression blank as she stared down at her hands, opening and closing them several times.

Nodoka was about to walk over to her and ask what was wrong, when she was grabbed by the arm, and pulled away into a corner by the others. "I presume you want to be the girl's Watcher?" One asked, gesturing to Ranma.

"She does seem to follow your orders very well," Samuels observed, nodding. "Though, when you said that the potentials here were very powerful, I was expecting a little better from her.

"Speak for yourself," Another man grunted, rubbing at his ribs. "That girl can definitely fight, and if she'd had a stake in her hand, my heart would be a kabob."

"We'll need her to go out to the Hellmouth as soon as possible, however, so there won't be time to train her in her Slayer abilities," another objected.

Nodoka shook her head. "That shouldn't be necessary," she said, though she did throw a worried glance at Ranko as she did so. "I'm not sure when we can leave, though, as Ranko-chan has some... friends... that I'd rather not follow us."

The men nodded, and one handed Nodoka a small piece of paper, which she looked over. Her carefully maintained sense of composure almost collapsed as she got a look at its contents. Truthfully, she hadn't known you could fit that many zeroes on a normal check. She knew that it was the entirety of her monetary support from the council, and had to last her a long time, but it was still surprising.

"I'll see how quickly we can leave," She answered, nodding. "It shouldn't take more than a few weeks."

The council members nodded, as Nodoka walked over to Ranma, who was still standing and looking down at one hand, an expression of concentration on her face. "Ranko-chan?" The older woman asked, shaking the girl's shoulder. "We've got to go now."

Ranma nodded, following her mother out of the building.

HR.

As they were walking back to the Tendo residence, Nodoka looked over at the martial artist next to her, who was still occasionally looking at her hand, and had made a few experimental jabs into the air as they had gone. "Ranko-chan?" She asked, causing the redhead to look over at her. "Is there something wrong? You seemed... a little slower than usual when we were talking to the others." She sighed. "I know I told you that it was ladylike to not seem as strong as you really are, but I hope you weren't holding back because of that there, that knife could really have hurt you."

Ranma shook her head. "Nah, that ain't what happened," She said, softly, and alarm bells started ringing in Nodoka's head as she heard the undisguised worry in the girl's voice. Ranko continued after a moment. "There's somethin wrong with my Chi," She admitted. "I... I can't feel most of it anymore."

Nodoka looked at her charge, confused. "I don't understand," She admitted.

"My Chi," the martial artist explained. "Life force, It's the stuff that lets me go faster 'n hit harder than ya normally can with human muscles. I can still feel it, and it doesn't feel like I'm low on it, in fact my reserve felt like it was almost completely full when I tried bending that bar, but it took a lot of it for me to pull it off."

"Can you get it back?" Nodoka asked in concern.

"Well, yeah, I guess," Ranma replied. "But it'd take a lot of time and work."

The Saotome woman frowned. This wasn't good. She'd chosen Ranko specifically because she was the strongest of the girls, most likely to survive what the Council and the demons would try to do to her. Now, it was looking as if that advantage had somehow been drastically reduced. "Perhaps the conversion process somehow locked away your power?" She asked, speculatively.

"Doubt it," Ranma responded, "Or I wouldn't be able to feel it at all."

Nodoka nodded. "Perhaps we could get someone else to go with us to help..." She started, and was surprised by the younger redhead's vehement response.

"No way!" Ranma exclaimed, horrified. "Anyone in the city'd just love ta pound me while I'm down, and I probably couldn't survive some of them." She hated to admit it, but it was true. At the moment, Kuno would be a challenge even if he were holding back, and Mousse would likely wipe the floor with her. As for Ryoga, well, there would probably be enough remains to conduct a DNA test... probably.

"Well, what about your Panda?" Nodoka suggested, kind of amazed at herself for even suggesting it. "He could fight, couldn't he?"

The pigtailed martial artist gave her a steady look. "Trust me, you don't want the Panda around," she responded, deadpan.

HR.

Nodoka frowned to herself as she adjusted her left arm, trying not to wake the little redhead who was using her shoulder as a pillow, while still turning the page in the romance novel she'd bought at the airport's duty free shop.

She really couldn't believe what was going on right now. Here she was, currently in Abudabi, ready to catch a flight to Cancun. A week ago, she would never have thought of such a convoluted method of getting from point A to point B, but apparently the people who liked to 'play' with Ranko were very good at following people, and Nabiki Tendo's advice to her had been to take as random a course as possible to get to the United States.

Given that she'd paid the middle Tendo around two million yen, in an account that paid out monthly as long as no one other than Ryoga Hibiki, whom said girl wouldn't even comment on, had found them, she was taking the advice to heart. Unfortunately, the combination of the pay out to the rather mercenary brown haired girl plus all of the plane tickets had depleted the money the Watcher's Council had paid her quite a bit, but she really had no choice.

Apparently, the ritual that had been done to Ranko had put her in danger in her own home, and as strange as it seemed, the Hellmouth was likely a safer place for her to be at the moment.

Looking down at the girl, Nodoka had to wonder at how she looked so peaceful, given that there was a decent sized sword slash in one of their suitcases from where that hidden weapons master, Mousse, had ambushed them while boarding their plane from Narita international.

Sometimes she wondered what kind of life the girl must have had, and thought that she would definitely want to have a pointed conversation with her parents. Hearing the airport's public address system crackling to life and announcing their flight, the Saotome matriarch put her book into her carry on bag, and shook Ranko's shoulder.

The redhead merely grumbled slightly and snuggled deeper into Nodoka's shoulder, mentioning something about Pandas. Nodoka looked down at the girl, exasperated, and tried to push her away, only to have her arm hugged more tightly. Looking around helplessly, she finally decided to stand, and as she did, Ranko rose next to her, her head drifting down from her shoulder to the crook of her arm, but she was still blissfully asleep.

The auburn haired woman's eyebrow twitched. "You aren't waking up, are you?" She asked, not getting a response. Sighing, she moved her arm to wrap it around the girl's shoulder and started towards the boarding ramp. As she entered it, she could have sworn that she heard the girl muttering something about her mother, but shook it off and kept going.

HR.

"So, where is this place?" Ranma grumbled, as she walked behind Nodoka, carrying what appeared to be ten feet of solid suitcase, with far more strain than she'd like to admit.

"Only a little further, Ranko-chan," Nodoka said, reading the numbers on the house fronts. As they went, Ranma was fidgeting nervously, or, she would have been if her hands weren't full of stuff. Ever since they'd turned their car in at the rental agency and headed into town, her danger sense had been telling her that running the other way at high speed would be a very good idea, and it was starting to get distracting.

"I've got a bad feeling about this place," She muttered, for the third time since they'd entered the city limits.

"Well, that's to be expected, dear, we are on a Hellmouth after all," Nodoka returned, speaking as casually as though she were reporting the weather. After having said this, she blinked and gently slapped her face, noting that she'd likely been spending too much time around the younger girl.

"Ah, and there's the house," She exclaimed, matching the number on the front of a small, one story residence with the one she'd read off of the documents the Watcher's Council had supplied her. When she caught a glimpse of the mail box, where a set of identification for her and her charge was supposed to be sitting, however, she really wanted to slap her forehead. "Smith?" She asked, dubiously. "Nodoka and Ranko Smith?"

She shook her head, muttering implications about the idiocy of the Council she worked for quietly enough that she hoped her charge couldn't hear her. After all, it was important for the Slayer to have faith in her organization, even if Nodoka was reasonably sure Ranko wasn't the Slayer, due to the fact that the artifact that had originally confirmed said status had also read positive when she'd tested it on herself a few days later.

"I'm glad I can finally put all this crap down," Ranko grumbled.

"That's all OF this crap, dear," Nodoka corrected absently, and then blinked. "I mean..." The 'Smith' matriarch was interrupted in her rapid correction, as a man jumped out of the bushes on the walk up to the house, his forehead baring more wrinkles than one of those Klingons from Star Trek, not that she would watch such a thing of course, and two gleaming white fangs poking from his mouth.

"A vampire?" She gasped, surprised that they would encounter one so soon after arrival. She reached for her Katana, and then cursed, as she remembered that she'd had to register it as an antique on the plane, and hadn't been allowed to keep a hold of it. Fortunately for her, Ranko didn't need a blade, and dropped the baggage in order to lunge at the demonic creature as it charged at her.

The auburn haired woman winced as the bag full of her most valuable magical artifacts hit the sidewalk with a loud bang, but couldn't precisely begrudge the redhead as a high kick from her sent the vampire staggering back with what looked like a broken jaw.

"Hey, what the hell're ya doing?!" The martial artist demanded, but winced as she saw the damage that she'd done. Her wince became confusion as the creature before her closed its mouth firmly for a few seconds, and then opened it with what appeared to be no damage.

"You can't stop a vampire like that, Ranko-chan!" Nodoka called. She'd known that the girl hadn't been paying much attention when she'd tried to give her a primer on demons on the plane, but she'd sort of hoped that at least something had stuck.

"All right," the girl said, cracking her knuckles and coming in with a series of quick punches to the vampire's body. She was surprised when, on the last attack, its hand lashed out and caught her left wrist in an iron hard grip. Irritated, she turned her entire body, trying to flip away but instead brought the vampire over with her, and then sent it falling back over her head.

When it stopped with a quick and violent jerk, she looked back to see it impaled on one of the pickets of the white fencing that surrounded her new home. "Damn," She cursed, right before the hand that was clamped around her wrist puffed into dust.

The young martial artist looked between her hand and the fence, blinking slowly. "What... huh... gah?" She stammered, obviously shocked. Nodoka sighed, and lead the girl inside, deciding that she could deal with the luggage later, preferably when the sun rose.

HR.

"So... they're... demons?" Ranma asked, as she sat in a sparsely furnished living room, holding a cup of hot tea that Nodoka had made as soon as they had entered the house.

The Watcher nodded. "They turn a dead human body, and use it as a vessel on earth," she explained. "That man you fought, he was already dead, and his body was being used by the demon to try and catch and kill other people."

Ranma nodded. "I've... never heard of a demon like that," she admitted. Most of the time, the demons she'd hunted with her father on the training trip had been big, red or black skinned monstrosities that liked to desecrate temples, or... She shuddered, trying not to think of the tentacles. "So, it's just like beating those demons from the temples 'till they go back to the netherworld, or something?"

Nodoka nodded, kind of surprised that Ranko had ever dealt with demons before. "These just use human forms, since it's easier to hunt their prey that way."

Ranma shivered. "Still, it's pretty damned creepy," She admitted, "Any way ta tell if it's one of these or just a human?"

Nodoka nodded. "Slayers are supposed to have a sense for it, but I noticed that you didn't sense it coming," she observed. "Failing that, I suggest you go after the people with the brow ridges and glowing yellow eyes."

Ranma winced. "Y'know, you weren't nearly this sarcastic back at home," she mumbled.

Nodoka blushed. "I'm sorry, Ranko-chan, this is just very stressful for me," she replied. Looking out towards the living room window, she noted that the sun was now slowly peeking over the horizon. "But now, I think I will go and bring our luggage inside, and then go to sleep."

Ranma nodded, still sitting on the couch with her tea, and thinking about what she'd been told, until she heard an exclamation of surprise from outside. She stood easily, setting the tea down on the coffee table, and wandered out into the front yard.

"I can't believe this!" Nodoka exclaimed, as she knelt among the bags. "They went through all of my artifacts, and all they took was my paper weight!"

HR.

"Hm, this has been a rather slow night," Giles quietly remarked as he hunkered down behind one of the grave stones in the cemetary, hidden from view by the prerequisite spooky fog.

"You're telling me… I haven't been able to get a good meal in a week," a voice remarked from right above him, and the Watcher looked up, saw the vampire looking down at him, and exclaimed, "Bloody hell!" skittering backwards on three limbs as he rapidly aimed and threw a stake with the fourth. The vampire casually leaned out of the way, looking at the middle aged man incredulously.

"You've got to be kidding m..." He started, before a second stake appeared through his chest, and he poofed out of existence to reveal an irritated looking Angel.

"Are you going to get up?" The black haired vampire asked, tossing Giles's original stake over to land by him, and brushing off his leather jacket where there was an obvious scuff mark.

"Yes well," the rather ruffled Brit said, scooping up the anti-undead weapon and scrambling to his feet. "I think that was the last one."

As three Vampires loomed out of the shadows, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I really should have learned by now," He muttered, wishing fervently that Buffy wasn't on vacation with her father. Within moments, the vampires seemed to come to an unspoken threat assessment, two of them peeling off to go for Angel, as the other turned to the only one there with a pulse, and the fighting began.

As Giles dove out of the way of a lunging grab by the vampire that had decided he looked like a good snack, he tripped over a root into the side of a large, hard stone monument, his head bouncing off of the thing with an audible crack. The pain abruptly exploded through his skull, and his vision started to blur. 'That's concussion number twenty-six,' he thought muzily, trying to keep himself upright.

He was about to try and attack regardless of the fact that there were now two randomly dancing vampires in front of him, when they both exploded into dust, and a short, female shaped form walked towards him. "Oh hello Buffy, how nice to see you," he said, casually, falling into her arms.

The redhead looked at him oddly, before turning to see that there was still one vampire left. Shrugging, she readied the short spear she'd used to finish the one that had been menacing the old British guy, and tossed it as hard as she could at the remaining opponent. As the dust of its passage cleared, Angel blinked, his arm suddenly bereft of the neck that he'd been trying to break.

"Sorry 'bout this," the redhead commented, shrugging.

END.

Council Screwup Count: 4.

Okay, well if you liked it, please tell us. If you hated it, please tell us. If you were indifferent, please tell us. If you want to send money, please don't tell us, 'cuz then we'd get sued. Do not slip it under our doors, as that's just plain creepy.


	2. Chapter 2: Welcome To The Hellmouth

Chapter 2: Welcome To The Hellmouth.

Sunnydale, even the most weirdness blind resident would realize, was not the best place to sit in a park in the middle of the night, having a cup of tea. Nodoka Saotome, currently Smith, knew this but was also confident in the precautions she'd put in place, as she looked across the street into the graveyard. "Hmm, Ranko is taking a rather long time," she mused, wondering if perhaps sending her 'daughter' into a graveyard during her first patrol had been too much for the girl's weakened abilities.

As she was about to get up, draw her katana and run in flailing for all that her six months of quick and dirty physical training was worth, the auburn haired woman noted two shadows emerging from the cemetery's gates, one much larger and bulkier than the other. Unfortunately, neither was her charge, and she began to become nervous as they approached her.

Quickly scoping out her fastest methods of escape, and desperately wishing that she'd waited to contact the Watcher who was already in the area rather than letting Ranko convince her that she would be fine, the woman started to move when the shadows resolved themselves into a tall, American looking man in a white shirt and black jacket, followed by Ranko, who appeared to have a mass of tweed slung over her shoulder.

The Watcher let out an explosively relieved breath, and just barely resisted running over to hug the redhead, as it would likely cause her to drop whatever she was carrying. Considering the thing groaned, that would probably not be good.

"Ranko dear, who are your friends?" She decided to ask instead, breaking the silence of the night with her lightly accented English.

"This is Angel," the redhead said, gesturing dismissively at the black haired man, "And the guy over my shoulder's named Giles."

"Oh," Nodoka said, nodding. "I thought we would have to track him down ourselves."

"You're looking for Giles?" Angel asked, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied the two foreigners. He hadn't gotten much of a look at the redhead's fighting ability in the graveyard, but she'd managed to carry a rather heavy chunk of dead weight with as little effort as he could, and that could mean trouble.

"Yes, well, we needed to get information on the local threats from him," Nodoka explained, noting the tensing of the other, but trying not to show that she'd noticed.

"He's not gunna tell us much right now, Mom," Ranko said, shaking her head. "He kept babbling nonsense words like 'Buffy.'"

"Buffy was the name of the last Slayer, dear," Nodoka said, though she had to agree with the girl that the name was... odd... to say the least. Also, she smiled at her, as Ranko had apparently taken quite easily to the cover story they were now using, and called her 'Mom' with almost no hesitation.

Angel looked between the two, and then to Giles who was still slung across the redhead's shoulders, and gave his best undead attempt at a sigh. "He'll probably be unconscious for a while, but I'll tell him to contact you," he offered. "I should probably take him back to his place."

Ranko nodded, starting to lower the weight from her shoulders, when Giles suddenly started moving, apparently recovering his senses. She tried to recover her balance, but wasn't quite fast enough, and he fell forward, directly into Nodoka, and over the rest of the bench she was sitting on.

As his legs came down, one of them caught the thermos that the auburn haired woman had been using to store her tea, and sent it flying into the air. Ranko almost teleported backwards away from the area, but Angel was too busy gawking in stunned surprise as a majority of the stuff landed on him, soaking his shirt through.

He glowered for a second, thinking about what tea could do to his clothing, when the liquid seeped its way through to his skin. The smell of burning flesh and grunts of pain made it quite clear what was happening. If those two signs were not evidence enough, there were also the glowing yellow eyes and the brow ridges. A moment later, the man stripped off his jacket and the shirt, standing there in all his pasty glory.

"Mom, what the hell'd ya put in that tea?" Ranko demanded, as she saw Angel rip the shirt from his body, and caught a glimpse of the rather severe looking burns on the flesh beneath.

Nodoka just looked confused for a moment, before her eyes widened. "The only unusual thing in it was holy water," she said. "I had it prepared incase anything came out to attack me while you were busy."

"Wait, holy water, that means..." Ranko said, and the already quite pained Angel found a very powerful snap kick impacting his shoulder, sending him rolling several yards away from the non-combatants.

HR.

Rupert Giles lay in the blissful comfort of semi-consciousness, knowing that something important was probably happening, but not really sure what it was. He tried to become more comfortable in his bed, as at the moment there were two rather hard things digging into his body around the pelvic area.

This seemed not to work as he expected, as he found himself falling head first for a weightless moment, before hitting something mostly soft. Granted, his legs smacked into what felt like hard wood, but his head was shielded from impact quite nicely. He was about to go back to enjoying his nice, relaxing rest, when he heard the distinctive, and quite recognizable, sound of Buffy kicking something.

This meant that he should probably wake up in order to help his Slayer, and he cracked his eyes open to see a face he didn't recognize looking down at him with a bemused expression. Moving his head slightly, he noted that he was laying on a bench, with his head in the lap of a reddish haired oriental woman. "Yes, well this is... awkward, isn't it?" He asked, nervously, reaching up to adjust the glasses on his nose only to find them missing.

"It isn't exactly proper," the woman replied, just as a body flew past Giles' field of view which he recognized as Angel's. "Ranko, dear, what have I told you about playing with your enemies?" The woman rebuked, and Giles turned at another voice.

"Sorry, Mom," a short, red haired girl wearing what looked like a black silk shirt and pants responded, pulling a short, wickedly pointed spear from her back and readying it for a strike. When she threw it, and Angel just barely managed to roll out of the way, the still mildly concussed Brit's brain suddenly snapped into gear.

"Wait, stop!" He yelled, though it didn't seem to effect the girl much at all, as she ran towards the vampire she was fighting, grabbing up her spear. "I've got to stop her," he said, trying to haul himself to his feet, and was surprised when an arm grabbed his shoulder.

"Ranko, stop!" The voice of the woman whose lap he'd been laying in barked out, and the girl immediately did so, returning her spear to her back, though she kept a wary eye on her opponent.

"What's goin on?" the young martial artist asked, throwing a confused glance to her mother, who turned to Giles with a similar look.

"Well, yes, um," the seasoned Watcher started. "I would like to know precisely who you two are, first."

"My name is Nodoka, a Watcher sent from Japan," the older woman explained. "This is my charge, Ranko. We were sent to protect the Hellmouth."

"You were sent to..." Giles said, shaking his head. "Why would they send a potential here?"

"She's not a potential, she's the new Slayer," Nodoka said, looking at the man who was still laying in her lap oddly, "And could you please get up?"

"What? Oh! Oh yes, of course," Giles said quickly, scrambling away from the other. "Terribly sorry." Despite the embarrassment, he was actually somewhat grateful for the chance to sort out his thoughts. At the moment, he was about as confused as Buffy reading ancient Sumerian.

"Buffy's the Slayer," Angel responded, now looking at Ranko with more suspicion than confusion.

"I know Miss Summers was the Slayer," Nodoka started, not wanting to bring up what had happened to the girl with her Watcher so near, "but after her death, a new one had to be selected."

"Oh," Giles said, and the look of realization and relief on his face confused Nodoka quite a bit. "Buffy isn't dead," he explained. "her heart stopped while she was fighting the Master, but she was revived..." He looked at the woman, seeming fascinated. "Are you saying that that was enough to call a new Slayer?"

"Apparently it was," Nodoka mumbled, wondering precisely what other surprises would be dumped on her tonight.

"That's..." The British man said, thinking for a moment and then nodding. "That's wonderful." He meant it, too. Though he wasn't entirely sure how Nodoka and her Slayer operated, the summer had been a very hectic time for him, even though it was the 'off season' for vampires, as he hadn't wanted to call upon Xander and Willow when he knew that they wouldn't get themselves involved. "Buffy is currently unavailable, and any help you could give us would be appreciated."

"Currently Unavailable?" Ranko asked, allowing her vision to drift once more from its constant watch on the Vampire across from her to give the man who had been with him an odd look. "Last time I heard that, it was 'cuz one 'o the teachers at Furinkan had finally gone nuts, and they'd found him tryin to commit suicide with a coconut."

All three of the others gave the girl an odd look, and she just shrugged, before Giles hastened to respond, "Buffy did not try to commit suicide." His voice trailed off as he admitted the next part, knowing that his attitude towards managing his Slayer was unconventional for a Watcher, at best. "She's... on vacation with her father."

"Mr. Giles," Nodoka began primly. "I find your attitude as a Watcher quite shocking." She paused a few moments before concluding, "You seem better than most I have read about or met. Still, vacation?"

"Well, she did die," the tweed clad man said, shrugging uncomfortably. "She told me rather plainly that it was 'Hazard Pay.'"

"Wish I got that," Ranko grumbled quietly. Only Angel heard her, and was somewhat bemused.

Nodoka yawned, and though she tried to hide it behind her hand, as was proper, the fact that it was three in the morning and she'd been trying to recover from jet lag for several days made it nearly impossible. "I would like to discuss this further, but unfortunately I would much rather do it with a clearer head," She said. "Could we meet tomorrow?"

Giles nodded. "That would probably be best," he confirmed, and passed the woman a card from his pocket that appeared to have been through the wars. She, of course, didn't have to know that it looked that way since he'd been debating for a good part of the last three weeks whether to give it to Jenny Calendar or not.

Nodoka nodded, and stood from the bench, picking up the thermos that had held her tea.

"Um, that's great and all," Ranko interrupted, "But what do I do about this thing?" She gestured over to Angel, who gave her a dirty look for the comment.

"Oh, Angel? Don't worry, he's mostly harmless," Giles said, walking past said vampire.

"Mostly harmless?" The black haired man muttered, feeling rather deeply offended as he did his best to fade dramatically into the night, complaining about Douglas Adams and overly-read librarians.

HR.

Giles stood in front of the house, and a small feeling of jealousy couldn't help but grow inside of him, as he compared it to his flat, which was crammed up to the ceiling with books too dangerous for even Sunnydale's libraries. Still, he understood that both the Watcher and her Slayer had to live here, so he shrugged this feeling off, walking up to the door and knocking on it three times.

As he waited, the man heard the sound of a loud battle cry, and the splintering of wood. He was about to investigate the sound, when the door swung open to reveal Nodoka, wearing a red and white flowered kimono. "Hello, Mr. Giles," she said, nodding her head slightly before stepping backwards into the building.

"Um, hello," Giles returned, shooting a glance to the side where he'd heard the noise before. "Is everything all right?"

"Oh, that's just Ranko-chan practicing," Nodoka said, and the Brit nodded, starting to walk past her into the building. As he got half way down the hall, he felt a prickling down the back of his neck and turned to see the auburn haired woman looking at him in a very similar way to how he looked at Buffy when she suggested 'blowing off' practice to go to a party. As she shot a look down at his brown loafers, he became vaguely uncomfortable for a moment before noting a mat next to the door with several sets of slippers in various sizes, next to a single pair of dress shoes.

"Oh," he muttered to himself, quickly exchanging his footwear for that provided and suddenly knowing how Xander felt the one time he'd looked at him like he was an idiot after he'd asked why tea was so great.

Walking the rest of the way into the house with Nodoka behind him, the man smiled as he saw that there was a tea pot and three cups on the coffee table.

As he made his way over to sit on the couch, he noted that the woman was headed for a side door next to the entrance to the kitchen, and he decided to divert his course to follow her there. The door looked out on a yard that appeared to be full of broken boards, and in the middle of it the new Slayer was dancing, for lack of a better word.

He'd seen martial arts forms before, after all, he'd had to go through the laborious and often annoying practice of teaching them to a fantastically uninterested Buffy, but this looked a lot different, as if the girl was randomly making up the next move before she threw it, yet she hadn't screwed things up or lost balance.

"Ranko dear!" Nodoka called through the doorway, with apparently no effect. "Ranko!" She tried again, but the girl continued on, and Giles noted that her eyes were closed, an intense look of concentration covering her face.

Nodoka grimaced. "I hate having to do this," she muttered, picking one of the shards of broken wood up from where it lay next to the door and hefting it in her hand before throwing it as hard as she could at the dancing girl. Ranko's eyes flashed open, and she turned to catch the tiny fragment with a quick leg sweep, powdering it.

"Huh?" the redhead asked, blinking rapidly.

"We have a guest," Nodoka said, not looking as though she were at all surprised.

"Oh," Ranko said, blushing and scratching the back of her head. "Sorry, guess I got too into it again, huh?"

"Just a little," the older woman said, and smiled at her charge. "Go to your room and get changed."

"Yes, Mom," the girl replied, walking past Nodoka and through the living room.

"Is she..." Giles asked, looking at the other Watcher strangely.

She shook her head. "No, that's just part of the story the Council prepared for us," she admitted. "Ranko does seem to really enjoy it, though. I haven't seen her real parents."

"Are you sure?" Giles asked, before he could stop himself. "The two of you do look remarkably similar."

Nodoka allowed her already rather crack filled mask of proper Japanese manners to slide for a moment as she gave the other a deadpan look. "I believe I would remember if I had a daughter, Mr. Giles."

"Um, yes, quite so," Giles said, shaking his head and trying to think of a good way to change the subject. "The girl seems very well trained, has she fought any demons yet?"

"I'm not sure," Nodoka admitted, walking to the couch and pouring herself a cup from the teapot.

"Not sure?" Giles asked, confused. "Were you not her watcher before she awakened?"

"Oh my, no," Nodoka said, shaking her head. "She wasn't trained by the council."

"Then how..." Giles started, before he heard footsteps coming into the room, and looked around to see Ranko wearing a red silk shirt and a set of black pants.

Nodoka looked at her disapprovingly, but she shrugged. "They're the best clothes I got," she defended herself.

"I'm sure your formal dresses being on the bottom of the pile of suitcases you dropped a week ago was a complete accident," Nodoka returned, with a dubious look.

The redhead looked sheepish, before quickly taking a seat on a chair set up across from the couch. Giles noted distantly that she seemed to want to stay away from the teapot, but didn't really think about it.

Nodoka gave her charge another disapproving look before turning back to Giles and saying, "I'm sorry for being so blunt about this, but last night you told me that your Slayer was alive, and it appears that the information I was given was faulty... could you tell me what's been going on over the past year?"

Ranko sat forward, also rather interested in the answer to that question, and the British librarian sighed. Normally, he was comfortable with monologuing on any topic you would care to name, other than sexual education, but he really didn't want to have to predict these people's reactions to some of the things that had happened, most especially The Master and Angel.

"Well, when Buffy transferred here..." He started, slowly, as the other two listened intently.

HR.

Ranma ran through the night at something close to his top speed, reveling in the sensation as his body moved without any irritating bouncing around. He'd been stuck in girl form for over a month and a half, almost straight through, while he'd been traveling to Sunnydale, and the ability to be himself again hadn't felt so good since Herb.

Knowing that it wasn't a good idea given his currently weak chi reserve, but not really caring, the young martial artist coiled his legs beneath himself, leaping to the top of a wrought iron fence and then to a nearby building's roof. He frowned as he felt the bite that it took out of his reserves, but knew that they were growing, and he would eventually be back to his old level.

Leaping to the next roof over, the pigtailed boy looked down and began scanning the sidewalks and street with his eyes, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He was, after all, supposed to be on 'patrol,' and though nothing had risen from the myriad graveyards in the town that night, there were still apparently many vampires wandering around loose.

That, of course, included the guy that had been with the Watcher, Giles, in the graveyard a week earlier, and just thinking about the idea that there could be 'ensouled' vampires was rather uncomfortable, but... As his thoughts drifted off in a direction he'd been going over in his or her mind for the better part of the last week and a half, he saw what looked like a mugging taking place on the sidewalk nearby.

There were two figures, both shadowed on a part of the street where there weren't any street lights, and one was struggling against the other. The martial artist sighed, jumping down from the roof and running across the front yard of a small home before getting to the sidewalk, where the two came into more complete view.

"Hey, let the girl go!" He ordered, as he caught sight of a large, bulky looking guy holding a dark skinned girl about his age by the shoulders. The man didn't seem to hear him, as he lowered his head towards the rapidly thrashing girl, and Ranma realized that he was going for her neck. Cursing, he reached the two, and brought a knife-hand down on the arm the man was using to hold the girl by the shoulders, grabbing him and shoving him away from her as he reached for the wooden spear he'd taken to carrying ever since he'd learned the weaknesses of the undead.

He always preferred his bare fists to any weapon, but in some cases the latter was necessary, and until he figured out how to coat a fist in wood without hampering its mobility, this was one of them.

As his opponent recovered, ignoring the pain of a quite likely broken arm, Ranma caught a look at his face and noticed that he was definitely a vampire. Lashing out with the spear, he was just barely stopped from killing the thing as it caught a hold of the shaft, twisting it violently. The martial artist held on, but he felt the weapon splintering, and eventually came away with a jagged piece of wood. Grumbling, he entered a defensive stance, and his opponent snarled at him.

"You'll be as good a meal as she was, you know," The vampire spat, lunging forward. Ranma caught him by the arm, twisting around him and kicking one knee out from under him to send him twisting to the ground before bringing the broken spear down into his back, thanking his father's insistence that he learn every vital point in the body as the end found his opponent's heart, and he burst into dust.

"Oh... Oh my god," Ranma heard the quavering of the girl's voice, and stood slowly, turning to see her standing and shaking her head violently. "He just tried... and you... and he... and dust..." She stammered, pointing between the martial artist and where his opponent had once been.

Ranma sighed and shook his head. "Ya should probably get home," he offered. "It ain't exactly safe to be wandering 'round out here."

"Yeah, thanks," The girl said, as Ranma turned and started walking off. "I'm Aura, by... the... way," She trailed off as she saw that the guy who had saved her didn't seem to be paying attention. "Not really talkative, is he?" She muttered, and then shivered as the cool wind blew through.

'Too bad, he was kind of cute,' She thought, as she picked up the bag of stuff she'd been bringing back to her house from Cordelia's from where she'd dropped it when she'd been jumped and started down the street, still mostly in a state of shock and, as most residents of Sunnydale did, rapidly trying to come up with an explanation for what she'd seen that didn't involve people growing fangs or magically turning to dust.

HR.

"Hmm, horrible delinquent and 'meanie,'" an older looking balding man said as he paced in front of a desk where Ranko and Nodoka were sitting, reading a file that was scribbled on in several different colors of crayon. "This transcript is almost entirely unusable. About all it tells me is that your little sister has far too much time on her hands."

"Um, that's actually Hinako-Sensei," the redhead replied, scratching the back of her neck and mentally kicking herself for asking the teacher to make her file as a girl as close to that as a boy as she could. Thinking back to the incident, she wondered if she should have just claimed not to go to school, rather than endure a week of on-demand draining, and all that candy, for the thing.

The bald man quirked an eyebrow. "I'm apparently very lucky I don't live in Japan," he drawled, and then tossed the report on the desk, slumping down in a large, comfortable leather chair behind it. "No matter who wrote on this, it's unusable for several reasons, first among them being how low most of the grades are." He shook his head. "We'll be setting you up with placement tests to determine where you fit in our school, Miss Smith."

Nodoka frowned, casting a disapproving look towards her daughter. Back in Japan, she hadn't known much of Ranko's school life other than what she'd told her about the teachers, and had no idea that the girl was doing so badly.

Ranko herself just shrugged. Trying to avoid the placement tests, again, had been a nice idea, but given she'd had to take them at every school other than Furinkan, she wasn't surprised. "All right, when do I gotta take 'em?"

The principal of Sunnydale high grimaced at the girl's gruff mode of speech, but decided that he would only bother with fixing that problem when she was a student, and continued, "You should be able to take the tests later this afternoon." As the girl was nodding, he interrupted, "However, I have noticed one thing on this set of reports. You've been marked absent for weeks on end, you've been caught fighting on school grounds, you've destroyed school property AND you've refused instructions given to you directly by teachers."

"There were reasons for..." Ranko started, before she was interrupted by the older man slamming his hands down on the desk.

"I don't care what reasons you thought you had, it will not happen here, do you understand?" He said, levelly. "I pride myself on running a tight ship in this school."

"A tight ship?" Ranko asked, confused. "Didn't know the school had a boat."

"It..." Snyder sputtered, "It was a figure of speech." The man rubbed at his temples, reminding himself that the girl's English grade had been one of the worst on her transcript, even if her spoken English sounded all right. "I meant that I try to keep this school organized, and don't like troublemakers."

"Oh, all right," his prospective student said, nodding. "So long as ya don't throw pineapples at me or ask me ta cut my pigtail, we'll get along fine."

Nodoka winced, and the balding man's eyebrow twitched.

"Why in the world would I do that?" He asked, honestly too surprised to get angry.

Nodoka cleared her throat. "Furinkan's principal was a little..." She started, trying to search her mind for the right word.

"Nuttier than a box fulla coconuts?" Ranko contributed, getting an irritated look from her mother.

"I was trying to be polite, Ranko-chan," Nodoka rebuked gently.

"Yes, well," Snyder said, unsure of what to say, especially as the girl's mother seemed to agree with her rather.. unique... view on her old school's teaching staff. "I don't usually throw fresh fruit at people, and I expect that means you won't be breaking any of the rules here."

"Sounds okay ta me," Ranko said, in all seriousness.

"There may be hope for you yet," Snyder said, reaching over to a phone on his desk and picking it up. As he talked, Nodoka gave her daughter a sharp look, and Ranko shrugged as if to ask what she was supposed to say.

The two sat silently for a few moments, before the principal put down the phone. "Well, I was right, we can have the tests done today and you can be toiling away in obscurity by the beginning of the year." He explained, standing as his two guests did the same. "Let's hope you stay there, hmm?"

Ranko nodded and Nodoka bowed, before the two turned and left the office.

HR.

Ranko sighed as she slid a pile of books into her locker, slamming it rather firmly afterward and slipping the combination lock in with a soft click. "Stupid school," she muttered, sourly, recalling the events of her first day, especially when she'd gotten her schedule. "Three years of this, again. Pop was right, they're just trying to waste my time." She stopped for a moment and blinked. "Wait, did I just think Pop was right about something?"

As she was walking towards the school's entrance, the martial artist was surprised to see her mother entering the front doors, carrying a bag that looked like it was bulging with books. "Ranko-chan!" The older woman called, and the redhead walked over to her, immediately getting saddled with the bag. "Don't drop this one, dear."

"Ya ever gunna let me live that one down?" Ranko grumbled as she followed the older woman down the hall.

"No, dear," Nodoka responded with a smirk that her Slayer couldn't see.

"So, where are we going?" The girl tried, this time hoping for a more useful answer.

"Mr. Giles said that his Slayer and her friends were going to be there this afternoon," Nodoka explained, as the two approached a set of large wooden doors with round windows in them.

"Oh," Ranko replied, not really sure how to feel about that, but hoping that this first meeting didn't involve tables and her skull.

As Nodoka pushed the door to the library open, the two heard the trailing end of a sentence. "...if we could get off that subject, there is something important I..." Giles started, before an unfamiliar voice cut in.

"You're going to help us with our project on rabbits?" A young man spoke up, causing the rather confused Brit to look at him as though he were insane.

"You know, because rabbits are fluffy, and cute, and herbivorous, and really good for a science project, and I'm babbling, so I'll shut up now." Giles seemed to realize something as the other trailed off, and turned to see the two newcomers.

"Ah, it's all right Xander, they know about the, erm, rabbits." he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Tell me about the rabbits, George," A girl in a fluffy yellow sweater chipped in, grinning at the boy across from her.

Xander gave her a dirty look, before turning to the others and asking, "Why do they know about the rabbits?"

"That girl there, Ranko, she's, um," Giles began.

"I'm the new rabbit Slayer," she said, smirking at the others in the room.

After she said this, a new voice entered the conversation. "Did someone mention something about dinner?" A woman who looked about ten years older than Ranko asked, as she entered the room.

"Enough about the rabbits!" Xander burst out, sinking into his chair and wishing he'd come up with a better topic to switch conversation to on such short notice.

"Yes," Nodoka nodded. "I believe we're here to talk about vampires, and the slaying thereof."

"Oh, well those aren't very good eating at all," the new woman said, shrugging and walking over to the table where the two teenagers were sitting. "So, what's up, Doc?"

"Ah, yes," Giles replied. "Where is Buffy? She should probably be here for this."

"She said she would be here," the girl in the sweater replied, and as if on cue, a short blonde girl, only a few inches taller than Ranko herself, walked into the room.

"Hey Giles, are you ready for train..." she trailed off, as she saw the crowd. "Someone set up a house party without telling me?"

"Ah, there she is," the rather exasperated Brit said. "Buffy, Xander, Willow and Ms. Calendar, this is Ranko and Nodoka Smith."

"Ranko and Nodoka Smith?" The girl who Ranko guessed to be Willow asked, with a raised eyebrow, having recognized the first names as Japanese, while the last definitely wasn't.

"Don't ask," the younger of the two advised.

"They were sent from Japan to help guard the Hellmouth," Giles explained.

"Wait, people were sent here to help me?" Buffy asked, confused. "Who by, the Slayer Fairy?"

The older man looked uncomfortable. "Well," he started, taking his glasses off and rubbing them furiously against the front of his suit jacket, "She is the new Slayer." He admitted.

The room fell into a stony silence as everyone other than Nodoka and Giles looked at Ranko in a state of near shock, and she nervously began to fidget with her pigtail.

"What do you mean she's the new Slayer?" Buffy asked, quietly.

"Yeah, we've already got a Slayer," Xander interjected.

"It's because I died, isn't it?" Buffy asked, causing the others to turn to her. "The whole Slayer power thing gets passed on when the last one dies, and I stopped breathing." As she talked, suddenly an image came to her mind, of a mop of red hair and a face that was shadowed by the uneven light of flame lit torches.

"So, wait, does that mean... Buffy's not the Slayer anymore?" Willow asked, confused.

Giles floundered for something to say for a moment, before Nodoka stepped in. "We aren't sure," she admitted. "There's never been a case of a Slayer surviving," she groped for something to say for a moment, and then sheepishly continued, "getting killed."

"Well, I'm still as strong as ever," Buffy replied, flexing an arm. "so I guess you can go home."

"What?" Xander asked. "Don't we WANT someone else who can punch Vampires across a room?"

"WE don't need anything," Buffy replied instantly. "I can take care of Sunnydale alone."

"Um, hello, group of people who have been helping you for a year," Xander said, starting to get slightly irritated himself, as he whistled rapidly and gestured around the room.

"Xander, don't," Willow started, before Ranko surprised them both by interrupting.

"I get it," she said, shrugging. "Ya don't want anyone else gettin involved in yer fight."

"No, I don't," Buffy replied evenly.

"So, ya wanna let innocents die 'cuz you're too proud ta ask for help? Hell, I power myself through confidence 'n I don't think I'd do that."

"Power... what?" Willow muttered to herself, writing something down on a piece of paper in front of her, as Buffy glared at the Japanese girl across the room.

"Believe me, you don't want to deal with being the Slayer," The blonde said, looking away from the other girl and over to her friends for a moment. "Just do yourself a favor and go home."

"Not gunna do that," the martial artist replied, shaking her head.

"All right, your funeral," Buffy returned, before turning to leave.

"Buffy, where are you going?" Giles asked, but he was ignored.

"She's lotsa fun," the redhead muttered, as Buffy left the library, the door swinging heavily closed behind her.

"She's usually not like that," Willow responded, looking worriedly at the door that her friend had just passed through.

"Yeah, no kidding," Xander replied, standing and heading for the door.

"Xander, wait," Giles said, quickly. "I will go speak to Buffy. If you and Willow could help..." He searched for something to distract them, when Nodoka cut in.

"I've got some books I need filed," She offered, pointing at the bag that Ranko was still carrying, slung over her shoulder.

"Oh, I can do that," Willow piped up.

"I'd be hoppy to help, too," Jenny added with a grin towards Xander.

"AARG!" Xander cried. "Can we forget about the bunnies, please?"

"I heard there's some training gear in here?" Ranko asked, noticing, for once in her life, what her mother and the other Watcher were doing.

Xander nodded. "I guess I'll show you," he conceded, "Just don't punch me in the gut while I'm holding the punching pads, all right?"

Giles watched two out of his three person team working for a moment, before frowning and starting for the door to talk with the last one.

END.

Buffy's acting pretty odd, just recall what she was like in Episode 1 of Season 2. She'll get better.

Note: Sorry if Giles sounds odd. Writing him is... it's... hm, it's... Well, it's very difficult.

We appologize for the rabbits.

Low council involvement this chapter.

Council Screwup Count: 5.


	3. Chapter 3: When She Was Mad

Chapter 3: When She Was Mad.

"So," Ranko asked, as she examined a thick punching pad that she held in her hands, "What's with you guys and your Slayer?"

"Huh?" Xander asked, from where he had his head stuck in an equipment closet nearby, looking for the training dummy, which Giles had apparently accidentally hidden behind a bunch of books again.

"I mean, Mom told me that the Slayer was usually a solo gig, and Buffy was saying the same thing, but Giles and you both mentioned that you work as a team."

"Oh," the brown haired teen replied, coming out of the cupboard dragging what he'd been searching for. "Yeah, well we couldn't leave a friend to face demons, right?"

"Doesn't seem like she minds," the martial artist replied, putting the punching pads down and walking over to examine the practice dummy.

Xander grimaced. "No kidding," he said, walking over to sit on the table next to the discarded training gear. Picking one of the pads up in his left hand, he started hitting it softly with his right. "I dunno," he shrugged. "Guess that Master thing probably shook her up, or something."

Ranko nodded, as she threw a few practice blows at the dummy, noting its responses.

"I mean, I managed to save her during that incident, y'know," Xander continued, his punches getting harder. "And now she's all like 'I can protect the Hellmouth al... Ow!"

Ranko looked over at the cry of pain, and saw the American shaking out his right hand. Sighing, she walked over to him and grabbed it. "You were holding it wrong," she explained, pressing on several points on the wrist. "Sprain's not that bad, though." Shaking her head, she asked, "You fought vampires with fighting skills like this?"

"Hey!" The brown haired boy objected, and then he shrugged, sheepish. "Well, I mostly tripped them. My fallen body was the perfect obstacle!"

Ranko shook her head. "Look, if you wanna punch something in future, do it like this." Saying that, she carefully ran through a slow, basic strike that was taught to all beginners shortly after the first few speeches on control, and before the first lessons on falling.

"Like this?" Xander asked, rapidly mimicking the move.

The redhead grimaced. "It'll do," she allowed, and turned back to put the practice dummy away.

As the two walked back towards the front of the library, Xander asked, "Hey, you're new to town, right? Only been here for a couple of weeks?" Ranko nodded, slowly. "Well, if you want, I could show you around town, you know, places to hang out, nice views, where all the Vampires are."

The redhead shook her head. "I ain't much for socializing," she objected, "And I've found all the places I need to know about as a Slayer."

"Well, um," the other floundered for a moment, "What about good places to eat? There's a great club I know."

"Does it have ice cream?" The martial artist asked, her interests piqued by the mention of food.

Xander thought for a moment. "You know, I'm not sure. We could find out."

"I guess," Ranko started, before she was interrupted by Willow, as the two approached the table where she and Ms. Calendar were busily sorting the books that Nodoka had brought.

"She's been here for an hour, and you're asking her out?" she asked, disapprovingly.

"Well, he's got to try," Ms. Calendar said, as she was skimming the table of contents of a book that appeared to be written mostly in Chinese.

"What, she likes me!" Xander defended, "She taught me how to punch."

"Wait, you were askin me out?" Ranko asked, looking at the boy next to her with irritation bordering on anger. Her first, and most immediate, reaction was to whack him into next week, but he hadn't really done anything to deserve it, so she held it back.

"Um, yeah," he said, confused at her change of demeanor. "Wait, you mean I was being subtle about it? Ha! Willow, you owe me fifteen bucks!"

"We made that bet in eighth grade, Xander," Willow grumbled, but she began pulling some cash from her pocket anyway, before Jenny interrupted.

"I heard him, and I'd say she's just not good at catching hints, rather than him being unusually subtle," the teacher offered, getting indignant looks from both of the teenagers in question and a relieved one from Willow as she put her wallet away again.

"Okay!" Xander said, "So I was asking you out. The answer still yes?"

Ranko shook her head.

"Curses, foiled again," Xander muttered, sourly. "Wait, out of curiosity, and because you aren't trying to eat me, what foiled me this time?"

Ranko shrugged. "I don't like guys," she answered, deciding to say it rather than scream it as this one hadn't tried to paw at her chest yet, and was in fact acting more like Hiroshi after being shot down for the fiftieth time.

"So, you're a lesbian?" Xander asked, before he could think of what he was saying.

"Xander?!" Willow yelled, shocked.

"Um, a les... what?" Ranko returned at roughly the same time.

Xander just backed up several steps, informing the room as a whole that he wasn't going to say anything else, and Willow threw a desperate look to Ms. Calendar, who smirked and shook her head, making a small shooing gesture with the hand that wasn't currently holding a Japanese demonology textbook.

"Um, well," Willow said, sighing and looking at the expectant redhead, "A lesbian is a girl who likes other girls."

"So, um, wouldn't that be all of them?" Ranko asked, blinking slowly, as Xander started coughing loudly and Jenny made a note that, for some reason, Ranko hadn't counted herself among that number.

"Well, not that kind of like," Willow blushed. "I mean, girls who like to..." She paused for a moment. "They're girls that REALLY like other girls, as in, kissing like."

"Oh!" Ranko said, understanding. "Yeah, then I guess I am a lesbian." 'at least until I get some hot water,' she thought, but didn't say.

"Ranko-chan!" Nodoka's shocked voice came from where she was exiting the stacks, having put the first load of books that had been sorted into their proper places.

"Um, maybe I shouldnt'ta said that?" The redhead in question muttered as her mother figure pierced her with a measuring gaze.

After a moment, the auburn haired woman spoke up. "Well, now I at least know why you were always such a tomboy." Ranko's eyebrow twitched. "And here I was hoping that you would get together with my son if your cousin didn't want to."

"Wait, I thought they were related?" Xander asked, confused, but no one paid him any attention.

Nodoka thought for a moment. Normally, she would have tried to set the girl up with a nice young man who would snap her out of her current state, but then, she was already expecting much of her, due to her duties as a Slayer, and thought that perhaps trying to change something else about her now would be ill-advised. "Well, at least we're in California," she muttered, quietly.

"Um... okay?" Ranko asked, uncertainly.

Nodoka nodded, though she still looked mildly troubled. "Let's get the last of these books put away," she decided, and Ranko nodded, grabbing a pile and taking note of the sticky notes on the spines that told her where to take them.

As she exited hearing range of the table, the last thing she heard was Ms. Calender's incredulous comment of "Kissing like?"

HR.

"Buffy, wait!" Giles ran down the hall, not really paying attention as several students who had stayed back for various club activities gave him unusual looks. He just barely caught a glimpse of his Slayer, as she turned the corner into the school's atrium, but she increased speed as she heard his voice.

Cursing softly to himself, he walked faster, and Buffy would have been surprised if she'd been looking back as he jumped the front steps in one long movement, eventually catching up to her quick walk and grabbing her shoulder.

"What?!" The blonde exclaimed, turning rapidly to face her Watcher. "Is there something you want from me?" Gesturing back to the school, she added, "You seemed pretty happy with your new Slayer."

"Having more competent help is always appreciated," Giles agreed. "But what I can't see is why you'd prefer to fight alone, when there is someone both willing and able to fight with you."

"Why is she even here, Giles?" the Slayer asked. "I can handle anything we're going to face, so why can't she just leave?"

"Buffy, you must understand that Ranko has an extremely strong sense of duty," the Watcher explained. "Now that she is here, she would never consider leaving the Hellmouth unprotected."

"But I'm here, so she can go away now," Buffy complained.

"Maybe so," Giles admitted, "But even if Ranko were willing to leave, and her own Watcher let her, it seems as though you've forgotten that there are a lot of people here who want to help you."

"Well, they shouldn't either," Buffy grumbled. "At least that Chinese girl has the strength to fight on the same level as the vamps. Willow and Xander, and even you, are just going to get yourselves killed."

"Again, that may be true," Giles answered, "But that's our choice to make, as they proved to me a year ago, not yours."

"Well it should be mine!" Buffy yelled, turning to walk away from the older man, before his hand fell roughly on her shoulder and he spun her to face him.

"Yes," he said, his voice sounding quite sinister. "And we all know how well that worked," he concluded, reaching back to tug at the back of his hair and pulling it forward, revealing the face of the Master. As the water once again began to fill her lungs, Buffy woke screaming.

Looking around, she hoped that her outburst hadn't woken her mother, and as her sight drifted past the window, she caught a glimpse of something that caused her to rapidly blink the sleep out of her eyes. "Hello," she said, tiredly.

"Mind if I come in?" Angel asked, from where he sat casually, letting his feet dangle outside.

HR.

"Well, how awkward was it?" Xander asked, as he and Willow met up with Ranko at the latter's locker.

"Sorry, what he meant was 'Hello, Ranko,'" Willow said, nudging her best friend in the ribs.

The martial artist nodded, pulling her biology book out of her locker and stuffing it into the book bag she'd been bought before she started school. She'd asked why she couldn't use her pack, but her mother had rather firmly vetoed that suggestion. "Hey," she returned, slamming the door. "I thought you guys were juniors, why are you here?"

"Gee, and I thought Xander was being too blunt," Willow muttered to herself, and then spoke more loudly. "We thought you could use some help around the school, and besides, we're going to be working with you, so..." She shrugged.

"Plus," Xander laughed. "We don't need to worry about losing any 'cred' for hanging around with younger students."

"You do realize I'm almost eighteen, right?" Ranko returned, deadpan, rather irritated, as always, about her height. "So, where's your blonde friend?"

"Buffy? She's, um..." Willow said, and then shook her head. "We haven't seen her yet this morning."

"Yeah, more like she's avoiding us," Xander returned, as the three began to head towards their classrooms, staying together for the time being.

"So, like I asked before, how'd it go at home?" Xander continued, actually kind of worried due to the fact that he'd apparently accidentally made a girl come out of the closet to her mother.

"Dunno," Ranko admitted. "Mom was real quiet for a while, but this morning she was acting, well, it was kinda creepy how cheerful she was bein. I figure she's got something planned, or at least that was usually why Pop was that happy."

Willow winced. The last time either of her parents had had a 'plan,' she'd ended up stuck in ballet for six months. "Whatever you do, don't sign anything," she advised.

Ranko nodded, just as a girl she didn't recognize walked up to the group, several others trailing her. "Oh look, the freaks have inducted a new member!"

"Hello, Cordelia, nice to see you too," Xander snapped back, irritably.

"Piece of advice, you should probably stay away from these guys, they're not exactly safe to be around." the girl, now identified as Cordelia, said as she leaned in towards Ranko conspiratorially.

"Thanks," the martial artist replied, uncertainly, "but I think I'll be all right."

"No, I'm serious," Cordelia continued. "Not only are they social poison, but there's all that stuff they do after..."

"Hey, you mind saying that any louder?" Xander interrupted.

"Besides, she already knows about the... rabbits," Willow said quietly, grinning as she saw Xander wince.

"Oh," Cordelia returned, and then tilted her head to the side slightly. "Well in that case, I guess I don't have to worry about warning you. See ya, freak squad!"

"Yeah, freak squad!" Another of the girls, this one with shoulder-length blonde hair, called as the group turned and walked off. As her attention was drawn to the other girls by that comment, Ranko blinked, recognizing one.

"Don't worry about them," Willow said, reassuringly. "Cordelia and her friends are something you just have to get used to around here."

"Yeah, like the fungus in the insulation," Xander replied, distracting Ranko from studying the girls as they turned a corner.

"Got it," she replied, and as the three reached an intersection between halls, she turned off to one side to go to her class while the other two went up the stairs.

As she passed a scowling, irritated Principal Snyder heading the other way, Ranko waved at him, smiling and calling "Good morning," simply due to the fact that he didn't have a palm tree growing from the top of his head, and not realizing that she had just increased his stress level by around ten percent.

"What in the world is that little runt smiling about?" He mumbled to himself, conjuring up images of spray painted washrooms, or a bucket of water over his door, or fires in the locker rooms... He shook his head to clear it, but continued mumbling, "She was far too happy. Those locusts are never happy unless I'm miserable, which means they're probably planning something. The question is what, and how can I stop it? Keep order in the school, have to..."

"Sir, are you all right?" A concerned sounding voice butted in on the man's barely audible rant, and he whirled around, his eyes flickering rapidly and trying to assess every student nearby for their threat level. When his eyes finally fell on one of the history teachers, he exhaled a long breath.

"What do you want?" He demanded, abruptly.

"Um, I wanted to go over the plans for the field trip next..." He began.

"Cancel it!" Snyder snapped.

"Cancel it? But I've had this set up for weeks, it was going to be the grand introduction to the Inca..."

"I said cancel it!" The principle ordered loudly. "They're up to something, I know it!"

"Um... yes, sir?" The history teacher replied, tremendously confused, as the older man walked into his office and slammed the door firmly enough for the glass to rattle.

HR.

"This has ta be the biggest waste of time ever," Ranko grumbled, as she sat at a table across from Xander and Willow, all three of them with glasses of pop in front of them.

"Yeah Will, let's invite the new Slayer, it'll be fun!" Xander said, looking at his old friend in irritation.

"C'mon guys, this place is neat," Willow replied. "Besides, Xander, you were the one who told me Cibo Matto was going to be playing, remember?"

"Cibo who?" Ranko asked, blinking at the other redhead in incomprehension.

"Oh, they're great! You'll love them, trust me," Willow replied. "Just sit back, drink some pop and let all the stress roll off of you."

"I dunno," Ranko grumbled. "Never really got into the whole club thing in Japan."

Seeing his friend's downcast expression at that remark, Xander chipped in, "Hey, they've got ice cream too, y'know."

Ranko's expression immediately brightened. "Really?" She asked, enthusiastically. "I'll be right back." As she sprung up, Xander gave off a long sigh.

"You know, I wish I could cause a reaction like that in a girl I had a chance with," he sighed.

"Join the club," Willow muttered, though thankfully too quietly for the object of her comment to hear it.

A couple of minutes later, Ranko came back carrying a platter full of large bowls of ice cream, scooping two of the bowls up and dropping them in front of Xander and Willow.

As she set the tray, still containing three more bowls, down in front of her own place at the table, Willow looked up and asked, "I thought you didn't have much money?"

"I don't," Ranko replied, "but apparently the waiters here are as easy to scam as they are back home."

"Wait, you didn't..." The other redhead asked, but was answered as she caught a look at a guy standing at the bar, who waved to Ranko.

"You are strong in the force," Xander exclaimed, and grabbed a spoon to take a bite out of his ice cream.

"But she can't, that's not..." Willow tried, but sighed as she noted that she was being completely ignored by her companions. Deciding that since beating them had failed, she may as well join them, she grabbed a spoon and started eating.

Several minutes later, Willow caught a glimpse of a familiar leather jacket out of the corner of her eye, and followed it to see Buffy and Angel standing in the corner of the room, talking animatedly. "Hey, there's Buffy," she called, and as her companions turned to look, she quickly dipped her head into her ice cream bowl.

"Yeah, she's with that vampire guy," Ranko commented. "Doesn't look happy."

"Well she hasn't looked very happy at all recently," Xander admitted, as the short blonde turned away from the taller black haired man and moved towards their table.

"Hey," she said, nodding at the three, but taking a moment to study Ranko disapprovingly.

They nodded back, and Ranko suddenly found the last of her bowls of ice cream being grabbed, as Xander offered it to her. "Want some?" He asked, brightly.

"No thanks," Buffy returned, shaking her head. "Do you want to dance? A new song should be starting soon."

"Do I want to dance?" Xander asked, blinking. "Um, stupid question," he observed, jumping to his feet and following the girl away.

"Likes her a lot, huh?" Ranko asked, grabbing her bowl and setting it back in front of herself.

"Mmhmm," Willow admitted irritably. Seeing the downcast look on the other girl's face, the Japanese redhead sighed and shoved the bowl across to her, recalling Kasumi and Akane doing the same thing on occasion.

Willow was about to bring a bite of the frozen food to her lips, when her spoon stopped dead, and she stared wide eyed across the dance floor. Confused, Ranko followed her gaze and blinked.

"Wow, wonder if she learned that from the same place as Shampoo?" She mused, watching as the blonde danced sensually around Xander, who was looking as though he'd just won a million dollars and had a revolver leveled at his skull.

"Y'know, I'd warn him he's walking into a trap, but he tried to steal my food, so..." She commented, sitting back to watch the fireworks.

"My nose is cold," Willow observed, reaching up to rub the little dab of ice cream off of it and turning away from the disturbing sight before her.

HR.

Ranma hummed to himself, even though he was rather too short of breath to really do so efficiently, as he walked down the street, watching as the sun slowly began to set. He knew that it was probably a bad idea to exhaust himself training right before patrolling, but putting down the few vampires that had been wandering the streets at night over the past few weeks hadn't precisely been hard, and Buffy had taken over graveyard detail, at least for this week.

Catching sight of a familiar sign in the distance, the pigtailed martial artist smirked. He didn't really want to have to drink the holy water bottle that he'd kept in his school bag, so he decided to stop at the Bronze to grab something.

Not noticing the fact that the building had a large red sign on the front door that said "Closed," he pushed it open, hearing a soft creaking sound, and nothing of the crowds that had been inside the night before.

"Hello?" He called, confused, as he entered, noting that all of the lights were off. "Anyone home?"

He was about to assume that the place was closed and turn to leave, when he heard the rather disconcerting sound of someone giggling to themselves. "Hello?" He tried again, narrowing his eyes for a moment before opening them to try to see better.

A moment later, he heard a sound that caused him to freeze in his tracks, as it was almost like a big cat had roared in his ear. His shocked surprise was just enough for the vampire to grab his shoulder, pulling him in to try and take a chunk out of his neck, before he brought an elbow backward violently, feeling the sickening sensation of the thing's unusually fragile ribcage collapsing in on itself.

Whirling around and managing to throw the thing off, he winced as he caught a glimpse of a female face. He'd always had a bit of a soft spot when it came to fighting girls, even if he was usually able to overcome it when it was really important, and stabbing them in the heart just felt more wrong than with the male vampires, in spite of logic.

Grunting in irritation as the vampire seemed to take the collapse of most of its upper torso as a minor inconvenience, Ranma grabbed a chair from one of the tables, shoving one of its legs violently through his opponent's chest.

As he put the chair back where he'd found it, he heard the front door of the club opening again, and turned to see Buffy and Angel standing there.

"All right, where's Cordelia?" The Slayer demanded, stepping inside and looking around.

"Cordelia?" Ranma asked, looking at her blankly. He recalled the name, as he'd met her while he was in cursed form only a day before, but didn't know why Buffy was asking about her.

"You know, kidnapped? 'Come to the Bronze before it opens,' yada yada yada?" the blonde said.

"Not open? Yeah, guess that'd explain why no one was here," Ranma mused, before Buffy walked further into the building, trying to grab him by the shirt front. When he twisted away, she grabbed for him more quickly, but he evaded this by jumping backwards, on to a table, and then to the floor on the other side. "Hey!" He exclaimed, indignantly. "What're ya doing?"

Buffy didn't respond, as irritation and worry quickly turned to outright anger, and she lunged at the martial artist, going right over the table, and grabbing onto its edge as he jumped to the side, bringing her entire body around in an almost horizontal kick.

Ranma jumped over it, bringing his left leg in quickly as Buffy kicked her right up, aiming for his groin, and just barely managing to block the shot. Nearby, Angel winced.

As Ranma rolled to the side and came up several feet away from Buffy, the Slayer recovered her bearings again. "I'm going to ask one more time, then I'm going to get mean," she threatened. "Where is Cordelia?"

"I don't know!" Ranma objected, and the vampire stepped forward.

"Buffy, I think he's telling the truth," he said, uncertainly.

"Did I ask you?" The American girl asked, before grabbing a chair and swinging it against the table in order to break off a leg.

The next five minutes, Ranma would later reflect, involved some of the most intense sparring he'd been in since he'd finished his fight with Herb. He hadn't really seen the Slayer's actual combat abilities before, in spite of all he'd been told about them, and though she wasn't much compared to the higher level martial artists of Nerima, her stamina was nothing short of amazing.

Unfortunately, with his chi drained the way it was, and the training he'd already put himself through that day, his reserves weren't nearly that large, and he found himself steadily losing ground, the girl's improvised stake getting closer and closer to stabbing him as the fight wore on.

The most annoying part of the whole situation was that he'd started fighting back a few minutes before, and Buffy had taken being thrown THROUGH one of the columns at the edge of the Bronze's main room about as well as Ryoga would. Climbing to her feet, the girl didn't bother picking up her stake, shaking her head. "Okay, now that just pissed me off," she growled, running at the martial artist, who rolled his eyes.

"Of course it did," he muttered, right before getting punched in the jaw hard enough to lift him several inches into the air.

As Ranma hit the ground, staring cross-eyed into the rafters of the club, Buffy loomed over him. "Now are you going to talk?" She demanded.

"Y'know, a few cracked teeth ain't suddenly gunna make me know somethin I didn't before," Ranma observed, casually, spitting several flecks of blood from his mouth.

Buffy was rearing back for another strike, when Angel put a hand on her shoulder. She whirled, ready to bash him into oblivion, when he held up a hand, and kneeled next to Ranma. Reaching one finger down, he wiped some of the blood from next to the boy's mouth, and brought his finger up to lick at it.

"Y'know," Ranma observed, "I really wanna stake you for that."

"He's not a vampire," the taller man reported.

"What?" Buffy asked, now totally confused.

"You just beat the crap out of a human," Angel continued, and then looked at Ranma speculatively. "Or, well, maybe not a human, but it's not a demon."

"Who're ya calling an it!" Ranma yelled, before abruptly clamping his teeth, as his head informed him that yelling after having his skull slammed into the ground was a bad thing. Of course, the pulse of pain from the cracked teeth was worse.

"Look, if you're lookin for vampires, I dusted one before you two showed up," he offered. "Now, if ya don't mind, I wanna get some sleep, but I can't get it, 'cuz ya probably gave me a concussion."

"Oh," Buffy said, looking honestly sheepish. "Wait, you said there was only one?"

Ranma didn't respond, but she continued her train of thought anyways. "Only one, means that this wasn't a trap, or if it was, it was a pretty bad one, which means..."

She looked at Angel, who looked back at her and nodded. "Library!" They both exclaimed, turning and running from the building as quickly as they could, leaving the beaten boy behind.

Ranma let out a long sigh between clenched teeth, before grabbing onto a nearby table leg and starting to haul himself to his feet.

HR.

Aura muttered to herself irritably as she walked down the street. It figured that she would get volunteered to go searching for Cordelia when she hadn't shown up for the girls' night out that they'd all had planned, even though she'd been mugged less than two weeks earlier.

At the moment, she was going around all of her friend's hang-outs, and had just come from the mall. Turning a corner, she blinked as she saw someone shambling towards her out of the darkness, staggering as if they had had one too many drinks. Carefully, she stepped to the side in hopes that they would miss her, until she caught sight of a rather distinctive black pigtail hanging down the person's back.

"Hey!" She called, though still uncertain, as even someone who had saved her life wasn't really worth talking to if he were that hammered.

The boy turned his head towards her, and she gasped as she saw his face, blood dribbling from his mouth.

"Are you all right?" She asked, walking closer to the boy slowly.

"Oh, hi," he said, though it wasn't in English, so she didn't understand it. As she was about to respond, he fell forward, smacking into the ground and not moving.

HR.

Ranko opened her eyes with the distinct impression that she'd lost a fight, most likely to Ryoga, given how she felt. Then again, it could have been the old freak in a particularly vindictive mood, but given that she felt the familiar weight of her breasts on her chest, she doubted that option, as the letch wasn't stuck to them. "Urk," she groaned out, opening her eyes to see a blurred, dark skinned face staring down at her. "Ya catch the license number of that pig?" She asked, and the girl looked at her oddly, saying something in English.

"Not important," the redhead slurred, switching languages.

"Are you all right?" the girl asked again, though Ranko noted that she sounded a little off as she did so.

"Nothing I can't walk off," the martial artist said, struggling to sit as the world spun crazily around her. "Eventually."

"That's good," the girl said, sighing in relief, before falling silent for a moment, Ranko busily rotating her arm at the shoulder and trying to remember why she had been laying on the ground with a splitting headache.

"Hey, you don't know why I'd be thinkin of killing a vampire, would ya?" She asked, casually.

"Um, no?" The other responded, uncertainly.

"Didn't think so," Ranko grumbled, managing to get all the way to her feet this time, and stretching her arms and legs. She tilted dangerously to the side for a moment, and the other girl was there to grab her shoulder, arresting the fall.

"You aren't really in a position to start walking," she said, shaking her head. "What, I mean, who, yeah Who are you?"

"I'm..." The redhead said, searching her mind for the information as it slowly began to clear. "Yoi.. I mean... Ran... ko, Ranko."

"You sure about that?" The dark skinned girl asked, dubiously.

"Reasonably," the redhead admitted.

"I'm Aura," the other girl introduced herself. "I can probably leave Cordelia wherever she is long enough to get you home."

Ranko suddenly stiffened. "Cordelia!" She exclaimed, punching the air. "That's what I was doing! Buffy was talking about someone kidnapping Cordelia, and... the library. Sorry, I gotta go!"

"Cordelia got kidnapped?" Aura questioned, and then blinked as she saw Ranko charging down the street, her steps getting more sure under her as she ran.

HR.

The library doors burst open, as the sounds of someone screaming in agony echoed around the room. Buffy briefly looked up from where she was casually pressing two wooden crosses against either side of a male vampire's arm to see Ranko running into the room. "Took you long enough," she observed.

For some reason that she couldn't understand, the redhead leveled an irritated glare at the other Slayer. "What's goin on? Something about Cordelia being kidnapped?" She demanded.

"Not just her," Xander said from where he was sitting nearby, rubbing one fist into the palm of the other hand. "They got Willow, Giles, and..." He was cut off as the vampire gave another scream of torment, Buffy's two crosses now touching each other through the arm.

"You ready to talk yet?" The blonde girl asked, cheerfully, looking down at the monster. "I've always wanted to try my hand at proctology."

The vampire whimpered. "I was ready to tell you five minutes ago, you crazy bitch!"

"Oh," Buffy said, tossing the crosses away. "Didn't notice through all the screaming, now where did they take them?"

"That old foundry on Brook Road," the vampire said, and Buffy promptly grabbed a pencil from where she'd set it next to him, stabbing it through his chest.

"All right, let's go," she said, quickly, before looking at Xander who was still rubbing one fist into the other hand. "And would you stop that, Xander?"

She looked down for a brief moment, and then looked back into his eyes. "I'm going to make this quick for now. I was wrong to suddenly decide you guys weren't good enough to help, and I'm sorry for it. You're coming with us, all right? That goes for you too, all right Ranko?"

The redhead nodded, but Xander shook his head. "I believed you before," he explained. "But I think I broke a knuckle when I punched that guy in the jaw, it hurts!"

Buffy just rolled her eyes, as Ranko walked over to the taller boy, grabbing his wrist and tapping against the offending knuckle. "Just a bruise, you'll be..." She started, before trailing off and bending down to look at something on the ground next to him.

Xander blinked in confusion and looked down at her as she picked a long, gleaming blade off of the floor, frowning darkly at it. "Mom's katana?" She asked, and for a fraction of a second it looked like she was glowing. "Where's this place we're supposed to be going?"

Catching a glimpse into the redhead's eyes, Xander flinched, and Buffy had to admit that the flat blue color was a little intimidating.

"I think we should get going," the blonde said, "Now."

The others nodded, and the four left the library almost in a line, though Ranko kept rushing ahead for a few steps before reminding herself that she didn't know where she was going.

HR.

"Y'know, she's starting to creep me out," Xander observed as he, Buffy, Angel and Ranko stood in the shadows, overlooking a large room where Willow, Cordelia, Giles and Ms. Calendar were hanging by their ankles.

"No time for that right now," Buffy said. "There's a lot of them down there."

"Yeah, we're going to need a distraction," Angel agreed. "Xander, you and Ranko rescue the others, Buffy and I will create the distraction."

"Distraction, huh?" Buffy grumbled, "I'll distract them all right. Killing all of them should do it." As she said this, Ranko's icy expression abruptly dissolved into a snarl of rage, and she ran past the others, holding the blade she'd picked up at the library in her right hand.

As she entered the middle of the room, both her body and the blade wreathed in fiery red energy, the other Slayer shrugged. "Or maybe she'll kill them all. That works, too," she muttered, before diving in to join the fight.

The entrance of a glowing Slayer into their midst seemed to stun the vampires for a moment, as they just stood there gawking at Ranko, her blade making a circuit at head level that caused three of them to explode into dust. It was at about this time that they finally regained some of their senses, most charging for the interloper, as a rather small one started running through the beams that surrounded the cleared out area where the four humans were hanging, being lost to sight.

When the redheaded weed whacker came around for a second pass, one of the vampires, wearing what looked like a priest's outfit, tried to hit her in the back, before Buffy staked him, scooping up the large hammer he'd been holding.

Jumping back before she could be bisected by the sword, Buffy looked for more targets, noting that there were two vampires menacing the pile of people that Angel and Xander were trying to get untied and woken up. Dashing towards them, she swung the hammer rapidly at head level, and though it wasn't nearly as clean as the sword, managed to knock one skull off and into a wall. Quickly flicking out her stake hand at the other vampire, she reduced it to dust, and turned just in time to see Ranko ending her rather violent movement, before falling to the ground with her blade laying next to her.

Noting that everyone was all right and there were no vampires in the immediate area that needed to be killed, the blonde looked to the hammer in her hands, and then to the middle of the room, where the Master's skeleton was laid out on an alter. Her worst nightmare had almost come true, in spite of how hard she fought it, but now, she decided, it was going to end.

Hefting the weapon, she walked over to the remains, and began to smash.

HR.

The procession of people who were making their way back to the school building was quiet, no one really having much to say after what had happened to them during the night. Well, Cordelia had had a lot to say, but they had dropped her off at her home about ten minutes earlier, and since then, each had been lost in his or her own thoughts.

For most, it was simple relief that they hadn't been sacrifices for the resurrection of an ancient vampire, or that their friends were safe. One, though, was looking alternately at the ground or the sword she held in her hands, her eyes having regained the dull look they had exhibited on the way to the foundry.

Only Angel and Jenny seemed to notice, the former not wanting to get involved. When the teacher fell back to walk next to the redhead and ask her what was wrong, however, Ranko gave her one incredulous look and returned to her previous activities. She'd tried to ask a couple more times, but had gotten similar results with each attempt.

As the group came into easy sight range of the school, a voice broke into their contemplative silence. "Oh, there you are!" Nodoka Smith called out. "I wondered where you'd gone when I saw the library in such a mess, and..."

The woman was cut off as a red blur flew past everyone else, slamming into her at high speed and hugging her tightly. "Mom?" The Slayer asked, relieved.

"Ranko-chan?" Nodoka asked, startled at the fierceness of the hug. "What's going on?"

"I... I thought they'd killed you, or something," Ranko admitted, blinking her eyes rapidly to keep back tears. She didn't really keep much stock in her father's old mantra that 'real men don't cry,' but it was still embarrassing, no matter how relieved she felt.

"Oh, well that would explain something," Jenny muttered.

"Do I want to know what's going on here?" The Smith matriarch asked, as she rubbed Ranko's back soothingly.

"It's, um, quite a long story," Giles explained, rubbing gently at the side of his head.

"Well then, let's get into the library," Nodoka suggested. "I've managed to clean up most of the mess in there, and I finally found the snacks you asked for."

"Yes!" Xander exclaimed, pumping his fist into the air. "Even the Twinkies?"

"They weren't easy to find, they weren't in any of the food isles, but I've got them," Nodoka confirmed.

Willow snorted. "That's because Twinkies aren't food," she explained.

"Hey! Blasphemy!" Her best friend objected, irritably.

"Children, we can resolve this fight when we get some sleep, all right?" Buffy interrupted, in a faux motherly voice.

"Oh, and one other thing?" Nodoka asked, as the small group entered the school building. "Where is my sword?"

END.

Please note that Nodoka's views on anything are not necessarily ours, and we're just trying to keep her as IC as we can, given the strangeness of the situation.

Unfortunately, all other notes, including the beginning ones, were eaten by The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.


	4. Chapter 4: Some Annoyance Acquired

Insert funny rabbit related note here.

Chapter 4: Some Annoyance Acquired.

"Well, don't you look beautiful this morning?" Xander Harris observed, as he, Willow and Buffy approached Ranko, the Japanese redhead slumped in one of the chairs in the school's common area.

"Shut up," she muttered, rubbing at the large, discolored bruise on her chin as she kept one eye open through a force of will.

"Are you all right?" Willow asked. "You didn't look nearly this bad when we finished up last night."

"Bruises can take a while," the other girl replied.

"And maybe she's not quite used to staying up until three in the morning fighting Vampires," Buffy offered. "Pro tip, that never happens."

"Yeah, just not used to it," the martial artist said, thankful that she was so tired that her face couldn't give the lie away this time, and deciding not to mention that she'd spent entire nights fighting other martial artists before.

"Hmm, maybe you shoulda called in sick?" Xander offered. "I mean, you've actually got a good excuse, and I can so rarely say that."

Ranko shook her head. "Don't wanna worry Mom," she explained, before hauling herself to her feet. "I'll head off to class now."

"Um, should we tell her that classes don't start for another ten minutes?"

Buffy shrugged, as the other two tracked the town's newest Slayer down the corridor. "So, did you walk into walls like that?" Xander asked, curiously.

"I'd... rather not talk about it," Buffy muttered, quickly producing a book and starting to make a show of reading half way through it. Unfortunately, she forgot to make sure it was right side up.

"A Slayer's life is full of peril," Willow replied, nodding sagely. At Xander's odd look, she shrugged. "Read something similar on a fortune cookie once."

HR.

"Cordelia!" The brown haired girl turned as she heard her name being called to see Aura walking quickly to catch up to her. This wasn't particularly unusual, as all of her sheep usually gravitated to her at some point during the day, but the look of worry on the other girl's face was new.

"What's up?" She asked, turning back forward and walking, as she heard Aura's footsteps falling in behind her.

"Um, look, this could sound a little strange, but, were you kidnapped yesterday?" The dark skinned girl asked, causing Cordelia to stop and rotate slowly on one heal to look at her with one of her best surprised and shocked expressions.

"Excuse me?" She demanded, putting one hand on her hip.

"There was this girl out front of the Bronze last night, and she said that Summers girl mentioned you were kidnapped," she explained hurriedly. Tilting her head, she added. "Oh, and you might want to yell at that drama coach."

"That obvious, huh?" Cordelia asked, sighing. When her friend nodded, she shrugged. "It was nothing to worry about, some guy thought he could get money from my family or something, and Buffy and her thug friends busted me out."

"Willow Rosenberg, a thug?" Aura asked, incredulously.

"Okay, so MOSTLY thugs," Cordelia corrected.

"And Vampires had nothing to do with it?" The other girl asked, probingly.

Cordelia twitched, violently. "No! They were perfectly human kidnappers! I mean, it wasn't like they wanted to sacrifice me and three other people to bring back the master vampire that Buffy fought last year or any... I'm ranting again, aren't I?"

Aura nodded.

"Note to self, stay away from Harris, it's catching," the brown haired girl muttered to herself, right before she bumped into someone, as she was too busy giving her conversation companion a side-long glance to really pay attention to who was in front of her.

She cursed as she lost her grip on her books, but was surprised not to hear them hit the ground, and looked up to see the Asian girl who had been hanging around with Willow and Xander two days before kneeling on the ground, holding three of her books in her open hands, and one balanced on her head. "What exactly are you doing?" She asked, looking down at the girl.

"Oh, sorry," the redhead muttered, standing without letting the book on her head fall off. "Wasn't payin attention."

"Some not paying attention," the haughty girl muttered, still staring fixedly at the book on the other's head, which was now conveniently at eye level.

Next to her, Aura grinned, the expression seemingly very suitable to a certain mercenary that the redhead knew well. "Hey, you're new in school, right?" She asked, brightly.

Ranko nodded, and Cordelia continued tracking the now moving book.

"Well, I wanted to ask you this before, but you were with the freaks, so it wasn't a good time. I was wondering if you wanted to go to the mall with my friends and I on Saturday," Aura asked, causing Cordelia's eyes to move from the book to give her friend an incredulous look.

Aura moved her hands in a sort of 'trust me' gesture, and Cordelia narrowed her eyes in return, but kept her silence.

"Um," the shorter girl replied, blinking at the other two. "I gotta go," she finished, as the five minute warning bell rang.

"Wait, will you come, or not?" The dark skinned girl called, as Ranko started to turn away.

"Yeah, sure," the martial artist responded, not really thinking. As she started off, Cordelia yelped and plucked her biology book from the top of her head, somewhat surprised that it hadn't somehow been glued there.

Once the sophomore was out of easy hearing range, she whirled on her friend, giving her a look. "What was that all about?" She demanded. "She's one of Buffy's friends, why on earth would we invite her anywhere?"

"There's something I want to know about her," Aura replied. "It could be really important."

"How important are we talking?" Cordelia asked, raising one eyebrow.

"I'm thinking abject humiliation for her, a new boyfriend for me, or something else," Cordelia looked oddly at her friend, as she started to giggle to herself a little crazily.

"You know, I think you really need that second one," the brown haired girl quipped, before turning and heading for her own classroom.

HR.

Buffy yawned as she, Willow and Xander walked down the hall towards the library. "Now, the sociopolitical environment, blah blah blah blah blah," she said, waving one hand. "I don't think I've been that bored since the presentation we had on snails in the sixth grade.

"Ooh, you did snails? All we got were flatworms," Willow grumbled. "Besides, I thought it was interesting."

"Right, miss geography queen," Xander responded, grinning at the red haired girl teasingly.

"Yup, still got the crown," Willow shot back with an equal grin.

As they reached the library doors, the three saw someone else walking towards them, looking much more coherent than last time they saw her. "Hey look, it's the Slayer zombie," Xander said, waving.

"You look a lot better," Willow commented, nodding at Ranko as she joined them in front of the doors.

"Yeah, sleeping through half my classes'll do that," the Japanese girl replied.

"Bad idea," Buffy remarked. "They just love catching you with tests while you're not paying attention."

"Apparently having a new exchange student's inspired the teachers," Ranko disagreed. "We've been going over the intricacies of the mysterious 'n hard to understand Japanese for the past couple days in history and geography."

"Learn anything interesting?" Xander asked, genuinely curious.

"Yeah, it's amazing how few people 'round here can hold a pair of chopsticks," Ranko said, the four students turning to enter the library, where Giles was sitting at the central research table, his nose deep in a book.

"Hey, watch this," Xander whispered, slowly walking towards the Brit, and doing his best to make as few sounds as possible.

"Hello, Xander," Giles said absently as the brown haired boy got within a few feet of him, causing him to jump several feet into the air.

"Don't do that, G-man!" The American demanded, "You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"Then don't call me G-man," Giles immediately responded, putting his book down and turning to see that everyone had arrived.

"Ah, hello," He said, taking his glasses off for a moment to rub them on his shirt.

"Hey Giles," Buffy replied, "And Xander, that was really impressive."

"I almost had him!" The brown haired boy objected, irritably.

"So, what were you reading?" Willow asked, curiously. "We don't have to worry about another demon or something, do we?"

Giles shook his head, holding the volume up so that the younger people could see it, the title 'To Serve Man' written on the front in crisp golden lettering. "It's a cookbook," he explained.

"Oh, I think some creepy French guys I ran across a while back had that one," Ranko observed, causing Giles' eyebrow to rise.

"Was the food any good?" Xander asked, inquisitively.

"Dunno, they were starving me at the time," Ranko said, before the three young people took seats around the table.

"Starving you?" The librarian asked, confused.

The Japanese redhead shook her head. "Don't ask,"

"Well, you'll probably be glad of that, actually, given what some of the recipes entail," the man continued, before rubbing his forehead. "There is very little happening at the moment, so perhaps you and Buffy would like to train together for a while?"

"Oh! This should be fun, anybody got popcorn?" Xander asked, excitedly.

"How 'bout you practice not breaking your hand next time ya punch somethin, funny guy," Ranko interjected, and the brown haired boy flinched.

"Yeah, that's actually probably a good idea," Willow contributed. "With all the times you get in fights, and stuff."

"Hmm, very good idea Ranko, Willow, would you please help him with that?" Giles asked, before picking up his book and starting to flip through it.

"Thanks for signing us both up for the firing squad, Willow," Xander muttered, as the two stood from the table and headed off, shortly followed by Ranko and Buffy.

HR.

"Okay, so how do you wanna do this?" Buffy Summers asked, as she squared off against her red haired counterpart in a large, clear space hidden among the stacks.

The other girl shrugged, settling into the signature casual 'I don't care' stance of the Saotome school. "Start whenever ya want," she answered, a cocky grin spreading over her face.

Buffy frowned. "What's the smirk all about?" She asked, holding up one fist, and getting no response from her opponent. She stood, waiting for the other to make a move for a moment, before seeing that she was steadfast in her resolve to remain perfectly still. Letting out an exasperated sigh, the blonde ran for the other girl, starting the match off with a quick leg sweep.

Ranko jumped over the attack with seemingly no effort, returning her own straight punch which Buffy blocked with an upraised arm, before moving into a quick series of blows and guards that eventually caused the American Slayer to miss a block, her opponent's hand slipping through, and the fist abruptly extending one finger to poke her in the shoulder.

Her eyebrow twitched. "What the hell was that?" she demanded, her irritation beginning to grow, especially as her opponent still stood there, as calm as ever.

"That's it, I'm going to beat that smirk off your face," she resolved,

A few minutes later, that resolve was fading, as she was going as fast as she could, and her opponent was bouncing around more than that tennis ball she'd accidentally hit too hard in gym this morning.

"Would you stand still already?" She growled, springing off of one of the book cases in order to try and catch the other in mid-air and by surprise. Much to her own surprise, the girl somehow managed to pivot on nothing she could see, causing her leg to go flying past her.

As the sixteen-year-old continued on her arc, her eyes bulged as she realized where she was heading. "Oh joy," she muttered, as she rapidly pulled her arms and legs back in, crashing headlong into, and through, a bookshelf.

As she pulled herself out of the wreckage and dusted herself off, the Slayer grimaced down at what was left of the shelf. "Giles is going to kill me," she groaned.

"Wanna know how ya screwed up?" Ranko offered, from where she was leaning against the bookshelf across the cleared out area, trying not to show that she was trying to regain her breath.

"I didn't," Buffy grumbled. "You were just too fast to catch."

"Not really, at the moment I'm actually probably slower than you," the redhead explained, then grimaced. "I'm just a lot better trained, 'n I don't let myself get pissed in the middle of a fight and forget ta look around."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Buffy asked, narrowing her eyes.

Her opponent shrugged. "It means that, when yer fighting, all ya care about is hitting your opponent, 'n ya don't think about your surroundings, or how they could effect the fight. Hell, ya don't even bother checking your opponent's actions ta see if they're showin any weaknesses you can exploit."

"You got an awful lot of information about me from one fight," the taller girl observed, skeptically.

"Not one, two," Ranko corrected. "A friend of mine got beaten up by you yesterday."

"They did?" the Summers girl asked, blinking in confusion.

"Guy in the Bronze?" Ranko reminded.

"Oh," Buffy said, flatly. "Oh," she repeated, as she realized, and looked down at one hand, which was holding a piece of the shelf she'd smashed. "Is he, um, is he all right?"

Ranko shrugged. "He'll live," she answered.

"I was going to call an ambulance for him as soon as I got to the library and made sure everyone was all right," the blonde said, quickly, "It's just that everyone wasn't all right, and then I forgot."

Ranko shrugged. "That part I get, I mean, I wasn't really the pinnacle of control last night either. The part I'm talkin about is that it took your vampire boyfriend to make you figure out the guy was human."

"That was totally justified," the blonde Slayer replied, quickly. "He was the only guy around, I was expecting vampires, and when I grabbed him to try and do the whole intimidation thing he started fighting harder than any normal human could. What else was I supposed to think, someone'd chosen yet another new Slayer and they got the gender confused?"

Ranko winced visibly.

"Wait, that's not what happened, is it?" Buffy asked, incredulously.

"Not exactly," the redhead denied. "Still, you didn't notice that the guy was asking you to stop and talk the whole fight, never went all yellow eyed and scary looking, even after ya almost broke his jaw, 'n never tried to kill you rather than just beat you up?"

""Okay, so maybe you have a point..." The resident Slayer said, wincing. "I've really got to apologize to that guy next time I see him."

"Nah, don't worry about that, he's used to it," Ranko replied. "Just be careful not ta pull the same crap on someone who ain't."

"Okay, point," Buffy nodded. "So, Master Yoda, how do I make myself more aware of my surroundings?"

"I ain't a master yet," Ranko said, and her face split into an evil grin, "but I got my ways."

HR.

Intrigued by the sound of flesh hitting both flesh and pads, Jenny Calendar made her way into the library, as it made the place the most likely to contain her objective. Buffy and Ranko were obviously sparring somewhere back in the stacks. Having never seen Ranko fight, she could not be sure which Slayer was doing better, but it sounded as though Buffy was fighting harder than she ever had while practicing with Angel.

As for Xander and Willow, it was obvious what they were supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, learning how to punch wasn't meant to draw blood. It was slightly impressive, however, that both were still working at it, despite the blood still dribbling from their mouths. Well, working through the pain might just keep them alive someday.

After observing what she could of the kids' activities, her eyes rested upon her main reason for coming to the library. Casually walking over to where Giles was sitting, she stood slightly behind him and read over his shoulder.

"Hm, maybe this one?" the Watcher mused to himself as he briefly paused to look over a page. After a moment of consideration, he shook his head, saying, "No, that glaze would never work."

"Hey, English," the computer teacher asked, causing Giles to jump in his chair, "what're you doing? Especially with a book like that?"

"Oh, ah, Ms. Calendar, how pleasant to see you," the Brit greeted with a bit of stumbling. "I'm planning a meal for this Saturday, and I wanted to try a new recipe." He received a rather leery look from his fellow faculty member. "I, I don't intend to use human flesh. That would be morally reprehensible. No, I am going to be using mere pork."

"Ah, a wonderful substitute," Jenny agreed. "You were thinking about using this glaze, right?"

"Well, yes, I was, until I realized how much the recipe would waste," Giles explained.

"Oh," Jenny replied with a bit of thought, "is that all? Well, in that case, I know a stuffing recipe that would take care of any of the drippings. I can show it to you on Saturday morning, if you'd like."

"Hm, yes, I suppose that may be for the best," Giles agreed.

"Perfect," Jenny said, grinning like the proverbial cat. "I'll be over then."

"Do you, ah, need my address?" Giles asked, wishing he had rewritten the information after giving the card to Nodoka.

"Don't worry, English," the teacher said. "Web directories are a wonderful thing."

"Yes, o-of course," the Brit nodded, and Jenny turned, heading for the library entrance. As she left view of the door, walking down one of the halls, the older man blinked. "Wait, did she just ask me on a date?" He shook his head. "Don't be ridiculous, she would never do that."

"Wow, and I thought you were the only sane one here. Going schizophrenic G-man?" Xander's voice came from right behind the librarian, actually causing him to jump.

"Xander, please don't do that," he rebuked, turning to see that the brown haired boy had a black eye, and blood running down his chin from a split lip. Next to him, Willow didn't look much better, as she had a similar lip injury and was rubbing gingerly at her left breast.

"Told you it went well, Will, I managed to sneak up on him this time," the younger man proclaimed, causing his best friend to snort.

"I bow before your leet Ninja skills, believe me," Willow said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, well," Giles started, "Buffy and Ranko have been unusually quiet, so..."

"Maybe they've killed each other," Xander interrupted. "I told you we should have watched them."

"I hate cleaning up blood," Willow grumbled, only half joking, as the three started through the stacks to where the other two had set up their little sparring session.

As they rounded the last shelf of books, Xander and Willow both blinked, as Giles went rigid, his face locked into the expression it had worn before he'd seen the sight before him.

This horrifying tableau was an only slightly destroyed section of shelves, with Buffy standing in the middle of it, her sweat shirt tied over her eyes. Ranko was at the side, with a pile of books next to her, and casually picked one of them up as they watched, chucking it at the other Slayer at high speed.

Buffy started to move to intercept the flying projectile, but was too slow as it passed her outstretched arm and smacked her in the side of the head. "That's the fourth one you've missed," Ranko observed.

"Don't remind me," Buffy grumbled, "My head's doing a good job of that already."

Ranko was about to say something else, when Giles suddenly broke out of his frozen state, choking out in a barely audible voice, "What the hell are you doing with my books?"

Willow and Xander both started to back away, as Ranko, who hadn't heard this, picked up another projectile.

"I said," Giles continued, his voice rising to a much louder register as he reached up to remove his glasses, "What the hell are you doing to my books?!"

HR.

"Oh, that was smart," Buffy Summers grumbled, as she and her redheaded counterpart walked down the hall towards the front entrance of Sunnydale high. "I don't think I've ever seen Giles that pissed."

"Didn't know the old guy had it in him," Ranko admitted, rubbing the side of her head. "That punch was half way impressive, and the battle aura," She whistled. "I think Akane'd be impressed."

"Akane?" The blonde asked, curious.

"Akane, she was my," Ranko started, before clamping her mouth shut and wincing.

"Hmm, seen that look before, usually on Xander," Buffy observed. "Went south, huh?"

"Hard to explain," the shorter girl replied, "and I don't wanna try."

Buffy shrugged. "Suits me fine," she decided, "but, just so you understand, I am officially blaming you for what we're going to be stuck doing for the next three days."

"Hey," Ranko objected. "It was you who smashed the shelf."

"And who thought it was a good idea to use books as projectiles?" Buffy countered.

"Oh yeah, and who let me?" Ranko shot back, getting into the rhythm of an old habit.

"Okay, you got me there," Buffy admitted, taking the wind out of the other girl's arguing sales. "It still sucks, though. We're going to be stuck repairing the shelves, and I've got homework and Slaying too. I'm going to have no free time until the weekend."

Ranko flinched. "Well, um, I guess I could take the graveyard shift a couple times, if ya want. Could give ya some time to relax," she offered.

"Relax?" The blonde asked, "I do not understand this word of which you speak." Shaking her head, she continued, "Thanks for the offer, though."

Suddenly, Ranko stiffened, as though remembering something she'd forgotten. "Aw, damn," she muttered, stopping and turning to smack her head into a locker.

"Okay, I know that's not normal," Buffy observed.

"I forgot, ya just reminded me. This morning, when I wasn't thinkin straight, I agreed to go shopping with a buncha girls."

"That doesn't sound so bad," the other girl said, confused. "Could be fun."

"But I hate shopping," Ranko wined. "It's so boring."

"Yeah, definitely not normal," Buffy nodded to herself confidently. "But maybe I can come with you. Who asked you?"

"Cordelia and her friends," the redhead said, and Buffy winced.

"Okay, NOW I feel deeply sorry for you. Never mind those graveyard patrols." She patted Ranko on the shoulder. "Be strong."

"Gee, thanks," the shorter girl muttered, sourly.

HR.

"And remember class," the science teacher said, as Ranko sat at the back trying to pay attention to a presentation on force deflection that she already knew most of, at least on instinct. "The principal has declared the science fair a mandatory activity this year, so please try and come up with a project." The man grimaced.

"Given the fact that the science faculty will be expected to judge over a thousand entries, may I suggest 'The difference between a fruit and a vegetable,' or similar topics for entries?" He suggested, hopefully.

The red haired martial artist blinked slowly, and muttered "crap," as she stood from her desk, collecting the few notes she'd bothered to take, and heading for the door.

She recalled Furinkan's last science fair. It had involved the science club, a twenty foot tall mecha, and large explosions. Given that fact, she held out no real hope for this one, but she'd promised Nodoka that she would try harder in class after the older woman had found out about her GPA several days before.

Sighing, she looked up to the clock over the classroom door, noting that at least classes were over for the week.

Of course, this meant that Saturday, and her doom, was that much closer, but also that she had some free time since the library repairs were almost done, and Giles hadn't been quite as ready to glare holes in her the day before.

As she walked up to the doors to the place, however, the pigtailed martial artist heard something that gave her a moment's pause. "Is that Giles... singing?" She asked, cracking the doors open and peeking in to see the older Brit sitting at his desk, singing to some music on a Walkman that she couldn't quite identify.

"Um, hello?" She asked, as she stepped into the room, letting the door close slowly behind her.

"Hello Ranko," the normally rather stuffy older man greeted her cheerfully.

"Are you all right?" the redhead asked, looking between Giles and the book cage, and wondering how difficult it would be to lock the clearly mentally unhinged man in.

"Oh yes, I'm fine, why do you ask?" The Watcher questioned. "Buffy asked the same thing when I talked to her earlier."

"Right," Ranko said, slowly. "I'll just go get the construction supplies and finish up the repairs."

"Oh, don't worry about that, I asked principal Snyder to call in contractors to finish it up, you can go home and enjoy yourself," The tweed clad man proclaimed, and Ranko immediately began backing slowly from the room.

As she was walking down the hall towards the exit, she muttered, "Kami, that was creepy."

HR.

"Ah, that looks perfect! And it goes great with your hair!" Harmony Kendell squealed, as she walked around Ranko, who was standing perfectly still and staring into a mirror, trying not to provoke the ditsy blonde into rummaging through the racks again.

"Huh, I guess this one's better than that other thing," the redhead conceded, tugging at the right sleeve of the green shirt she was wearing. "It's a bit tight, though."

"A bit tight?" Harmony objected. "Well, you do go around without a bra, I thought you wanted to show off, and a tight shirt is good for keeping your chest supported, too."

Ranko's eyebrow twitched. "I don't wear a bra for a very good reason, and it ain't 'showin off,'" she snapped.

"I dunno, you did buy that black shirt with 'Bite me' written across it," Aura teased from behind the other two, coming in with an armful of things she'd selected for the annoyed martial artist to try on. "You're sending some serious mixed signals here, girl."

"Oh man, you didn't get more, did you?" Ranko moaned, catching sight of the pile of clothes. "We've been hanging around here for forty minutes already."

"Come on, you're on a shopping trip with three of the best dressed girls in school, and we're helping with fashion tips. It's got to be the most fun anyone could have!" Aura said, slapping the pigtailed girl on the back.

"Yeah, if buying even half of the stuff you guys already picked out wouldn't drain my bank account, and if I actually liked shopping," Ranko griped.

"Oooh! This is cute, check it out!" Harmony exclaimed from where she was rummaging through Aura's selections. As Ranko turned to see what she was talking about, she flinched violently.

"No." She said, deadpan, surprising the other two. Normally, she would either sigh, grumble and put something on, or make much more verbally complex objections.

"Why not?" Harmony asked, looking down at the cute white shirt with the picture of a curled up black cat on the front. "It's kind of kiddy, and you're short enough to pull off the cute innocent look."

"No cats," Ranko objected, firmly, thanking whatever was up there that the language barrier allowed her to say an equivalent word to the fuzzy demon beasts from hell without stuttering. "I'll never wear anything with a cat on it."

"Some girl, doesn't like cute little kitty cats," Aura commented, holding the shirt up to Ranko, who flinched away from it.

The redhead sighed. For some reason, the dark skinned girl had been sliding jabs at her femininity all through the trip, and though she wasn't usually one to defend it, unless someone actually insulted her looks, it was getting kind of old.

"I was dropped into a pit of starved cats when I was six years old. This was done several times, until my mind snapped and I went insane. I am, and have been ever since, terrified of the damned things. NO CATS!" She said, starting off in a flat recitation, before bursting out with the last two words as loudly as she could.

"Oh..." Aura said, completely taken aback. "I'm... sorry?"

"Wow, that one hits about as far down the suck-o-meter as the time I broke a nail during cheerleading practice!" Harmony exclaimed, getting incredulous looks from both Aura and Cordelia, who was just entering the room.

"I don't think even I'd say something that belittling," the brown eyed girl said. "Now, are we finished getting the newest freak something she can be seen with us in?"

"Yeah, probably," Aura said, gesturing at Ranko's current apparel of the green shirt and a set of white slacks.

Ranko nodded, and put one other shirt into a bag before grabbing her normal clothes and starting to the change room.

"Nu-uh!" Cordelia said, raising a hand. "You keep wearing those, we'll cut the tags off and scan them through."

The redhead grumbled, but nodded as she scooped her old clothes into the bag with the 'bite me' shirt. "This is gunna take most of my money," she observed to herself, before following the others to the cash register, and then outside.

"All right, so can we leave now?" The redhead demanded, as the group of four stood in front of a fountain in the middle of the mall.

"Nope," Cordelia said. "We have only begun to shop!"

Ranko sighed.

"All right," Aura proclaimed, and then pointed a hand towards a store across from the one they had just exited. "That is our next target."

Ranko followed the dark skinned girl's finger, and gulped. "There?" She asked, worriedly, looking at the lingerie shop, and violently trying to keep the thought of shriveled old men out of her head.

"Mmhmm," Aura replied, and the redhead rolled her eyes.

"What kami did I piss off, exactly?" She muttered, as she reluctantly followed the other three into the store.

HR.

"Did you just sneeze?" A large, red-skinned man asked as he leaned one arm against a bar, sipping a liquid that looked disconcertingly like blood.

"We can't sneeze," the woman across from him snapped in her gruff voice, setting her own drink on the bar top and straightening up. "You're insane."

"I dunno," the red skinned man countered, "I heard from some Japanese fear demon that whenever he's invoked he sneezes."

"Do I look like a Japanese fear demon to you?" The female asked, leaning towards him to reveal a grey face with sunken dark eyes and dark markings.

"Um, no?" He asked, uncertainly.

"Didn't think so," the female demon proclaimed, and then frowned. "Damn it, why did you have to remind me of Japan?"

"Something wrong with Japan?" The red skinned male asked, taking another sip of his blood.

"Damned old fool," the female grumbled, almost too low to be heard, before striding from the demonic bar where she had been relaxing, "Reminding me of my job."

"Hey!" The bartender demanded, "Where's my payment!?"

HR.

"This really isn't a good idea," Ranko commented, as she was being tugged by the arm into a changing stall.

"Just be quiet and help me out with this, all right?" Aura replied, holding a white, lace covered garment in front of Ranko's face, which was staring resolutely into a wall. "C'mon, now get that top off. No matter what Harm says, going around without something underneath it isn't really a good idea. It screams 'hey, I'm easy!'"

"Easy?" The redhead asked, confused.

"You know, this would be easier if you were American," the other girl complained. "Just get changed, all right?"

Ranko sighed, knowing that by this point there would be nothing gained by arguing with the other girl, and quickly and efficiently began changing clothes. As she strained, trying to line up five tiny hooks simultaneously behind her back, Aura said, "Damn, are you stubborn or what?"

"I've managed to do this before," Ranko grumbled, crossing her eyes.

"Of course you have," the taller girl replied, "but it's annoying, and I'm here to help." She quickly reached out and deftly secured the hooks, and then began to get changed herself.

Ranko slipped her shirt back on in record time, and was about to crawl under the changing room's door, when the other girl looked over her shoulder at her and asked, "And where are you going? I hook your back, you hook mine, that's the deal."

Ranko internally cursed, resolutely facing one corner and muttering about how much it was likely going to hurt when Ukyo, Shampoo or Akane inevitably heard about this.

"Well?" Aura demanded, after a few moments of irritably staring into the mirror in front of her, where Ranko's turned back was reflected.

The redhead winced, and turned rapidly while keeping her head facing the side. For a brief moment, she found the full speed of the Amaguriken, and performed her task before sliding under the stall door, this time successfully.

Aura blinked. "Um, okay," she said, slowly.

HR.

"I can't believe you did that," Cordelia grumbled, as she stared holes in the side of Harmony's head.

"What, Ranko did it too," the blonde objected.

"I scammed ice cream, you went and got a pair of shoes for free," Ranko objected. "There's a difference."

"I don't really see one," the blonde replied.

"Just trust me, there is," Ranko said with complete conviction, before looking at the much taller girl, curiously. "And why did you go into the back room with the manager, anyways?"

"Trust me on this, if you don't know, you don't want to," Cordelia advised, still giving one of her best friends a truly disgusted look.

"So, um, can I go now?" Ranko asked, though the hopefulness that had previously laced the question when she'd first asked it was now almost completely gone.

Cordelia shot a look to Aura, who nodded and turned to the redhead and led her a short distance away from the others. Digging around in her purse, the dark skinned girl came out with several bills and handed them to the shorter girl. "Thanks, Ranko. Yeah, we're done," she confirmed.

"Um, what's the money for?" The pigtailed martial artist asked, though her Saotome instincts were screaming for her to take it and run like the wind.

"Oh, well to be honest," Aura explained, "I wanted to know something about you, and that's why I asked you on this trip." She shrugged. "I know it, now."

Ranko looked nervous. "Um, you know..." She asked, and tried to think of a way to say it without actually saying it.

"About you and water, yeah," the dark skinned girl replied. Seeing Ranko gulp, she continued, "Don't worry, you're all right, for a weirdo, anyways. I won't tell anyone."

Ranko looked relieved. "Um, thanks," she said, not entirely sure what was going on, but not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth.

As the martial artist walked off, Cordelia looked at the friend who she wasn't currently completely disgusted with. "So... what was that all about?" She questioned. "And don't give me that 'I won't tell' line. You've got to tell me."

Aura frowned for a moment, and then shrugged. "Sorry, but I actually meant it this time." Cordelia sputtered, irritated, but was unable to get her friend to say anything more on the subject, in spite of bothering her for the rest of the day.

End.

Cordettes not gossiping? It's another Apocalypse!


	5. Chapter 5: BYOS

Chapter 5: BYOS.

"Angel?" Buffy asked, looking out her window from her place on her bed. "What's with the burn?"

"I was looking for you, in the cemetery, and," the vampire began, only to be cut off.

"So you fell on a gravestone, huh?" the Slayer guessed.

Slipping through the window and taking a more comfortable seat on the inner sill, he replied, "Well, yes, I did fall." He was going to continue when the thought of admitting what had really happened stopped him. The event reminded him a little too closely of his first encounter with the girl. "Yes, that's what happened."

"So, what's up?" Buffy asked, leaning forward slightly. "Need me to check out some abandoned crypt with you?"

"No, actually," Angel said, showing an amazing lack of observational prowess.

"Fine then," Buffy replied snippily. "Then go away. I have homework to do."

"But Buffy, I-" Angel tried, only to be cut off.

"I said go," the short blond nearly growled as she pointed to the window.

With a sigh, Angel turned and left, the intricacies of the female mind baffling him.

HR.

Sitting at the research table in the library, Giles looked over the list in front of him, and frowned. "Are these for what I think they're for?" He asked, concerned.

Nodoka nodded next to him. "I have the crystals, but I never kept a supply of the needed drugs even in Japan, and if I had, getting them through customs would have been very difficult."

The Brit nodded, his memory of the process of getting some of his own ancient relic weapons and artifacts through still quite fresh even after years, but then shook his head. "But why would you be doing this now? The girl's just settling in, and the Night of Saint Vigeous is only a few weeks away."

Nodoka sighed, and reached a hand up to rub at the bridge of her nose. "I know that, but according to Ranko-chan's birth records, her eighteenth birthday is in a month, and you know what they do if we try and postpone it or warn our charges."

"A shame," the brown haired watcher said, sighing. "You are aware of the mortality rate of the test, correct?"

The Japanese woman glared. "And what choice do I have?" She demanded. "Besides, all of the girls I had to choose from were nearing the age, and Ranko was the only one who I felt could survive the ordeal."

The tweed clad man looked away, knowing that he would eventually have to make the same decision in a few years time, and headed for his office, where the needed chemicals were stored.

As he was returning a few moments later with a case full of syringes, he heard the library's door open, and Ranko walked in. Giles almost dropped the case he was holding, only catching it just barely on the ends of his fingers. "Oh, um, h... Hello, Ranko," He greeted, causing Nodoka to look sharply over from a book she was studying.

"Hey, I'm glad I found you guys," the redhead remarked. "Something strange happened during graveyard duty last night and..."

"Ranko-chan," Nodoka interrupted, "Can we talk about this later? I'm working on something important with Mr. Giles."

The short redhead blinked, looking between her mother and the Brit, both of whom looked nervous, before turning for the door. "Sure, I'll be back this afternoon," she replied, wondering if the two already knew about the corpse that had been stolen.

HR.

"So, what'cha doing?" Xander asked, as he looked over Willow's shoulder to read the application form she was writing on. "The effects of sub-violet light deprivation on the development of fruit flies?" He asked, blinking in incomprehension.

The red haired girl nodded. "Should be an easy enough project to maintain, even with everything else," she muttered.

"Everything else, you mean you've heard something I haven't?" The brown haired boy asked worriedly.

Willow shook her head. "No, it's just, there's always something else," she shrugged.

Xander nodded, and then grinned. "So, easy huh?"

"All I've got to do is raise fruit flies, we did it in sixth grade, remember?" The girl explained.

"Hmm," Xander said, thinking deeply. "So, can I copy you shamelessly again?"

Willow laughed. "Yes Xander, I'll help you with your project," she said, turning as she saw Ranko walking up to the registration desk, looking kind of confused. Seeing the two of them, she walked over, looking over Willow's shoulder just as Xander did before and blinking.

"Okay, that English is way outta my league," she confessed.

"She's gunna put bugs in a box," Xander clarified, earning an 'ah,' and a nod from the Japanese girl.

"So, what's your project going to be?" Willow asked curiously.

The other redhead grimaced. "No clue," she admitted. "Never was real good at the whole science thing, so I'll probably do the Fruit versus Vegetable thing. At least I know that one."

"Hmm," Xander said, considering, until Willow rolled her eyes.

"Come on guys, don't do that, it's embarrassing!" She exclaimed, drawing startled glances from the other two. "You know, endangering my geek cred, and all."

"Wait, you've got geek cred?" Xander asked, completely missing the joke.

"Remember? The AV equipment last year?" The American redhead smirked. "It was my shining star of popularity, well, discounting the dead bodies."

Ranko looked disturbed. "Oh right, dead bodies," she muttered, recalling what she'd wanted to tell the watchers about earlier.

"It's never a good sign when the words 'dead bodies' remind someone of something," Xander grumbled, sourly.

The pigtailed girl nodded. "Someone was in the graveyard yesterday digging up at least one body, a girl named Meredith Todd."

"So a vampire got past you?" Willow asked, both curious and concerned.

Ranko shook her head. "Nah, corpse was dragged off," she said, casually, as Cordelia approached the talking group, her face wrinkling into disgust as she heard that last statement.

"Well, that was something I wanted to hear today," the brown haired girl snapped snippily. "Why is it that you people are always talking about such gross things?"

"Wouldn't matter to you if you didn't eavesdrop," Xander snapped back.

"Okay, so if it's not a vampire, what is it?" Willow asked, mostly ignoring the previous exchange.

Ranko shrugged. "Dunno," she explained. "Why I'm asking you guys. Figure you've got more experience."

Willow nodded in comprehension. "Buffy should be back in a few minutes, then we'll all hit the library," she then grinned. "You haven't been around during our research binges, have you?"

Ranko looked nervous, shaking her head at the other redhead's odd look, before Xander clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, I've got a Gameboy," he confided, softly.

"Hello, I need some help here!" Cordelia exclaimed, as the three other students walked off. "Rosenberg, is a Tomato..."

"Fruit!" Willow called back, irritably, causing several students who were standing nearby to withdraw notepads and jot down quick notes.

HR.

"Okay, so what's this about grand theft corpse?" Buffy asked, as she walked into the library, where Giles and Nodoka were carefully looking over what looked like a mad scientist's Bunsen burner setup.

The Brit jumped several inches, fumbling a beaker he was carrying, but recovering before he spilt it. "Buffy, hello, how nice to see... um, what?" he asked, as her statement finally penetrated.

"We were going to tell you if you'd have waited," Willow's slightly annoyed voice came from behind the blonde, as she pushed into the room carrying an armload of books, her homework for the day. "I think Mr. Sanders is going to have a heart attack with the whole walked out of class thing."

"You walked out of class?" Giles asked, looking up at his Slayer disapprovingly.

"Hello? Walking dead that aren't vampires, or some creep who really needs to be punched in the face," the Summers girl said, waving her Watcher's concern off. "Besides, it was government studies, nothing important."

"Gotta agree with that one, G-man," Xander contributed, as he and Ranko followed Willow in, the redhead wearing a set of shorts and a T-shirt from gym class.

"And what are you doing here, young lady?" Nodoka asked, pinning the girl with a look, to which the martial artist shrugged.

"Gym teacher told me I could go after I ran a few laps," the girl said, casually. "Besides, Buffy's got a point, the whole undead thing's kinda important."

Nodoka grimaced, wishing that her 'daughter' was just exhibiting teenaged rebellion, but unfortunately she could see her point. "All right," she sighed, "now what's this about a 'grand theft corpse?'" she reiterated Buffy's question.

HR.

"Ow," Buffy grumbled, as yet another beanbag hit her in the side of the head. "You're having fun with this, aren't you?" she accused, trying to glare at her tormentor, but the blindfold made it rather difficult.

"It's training," Ranko replied, which, if you'd known her, would have translated as 'of course I am,' but Buffy didn't so she just tried to burn holes through her blindfold with her glare. "Hey, at least you're getting better at blocking things without seeing 'em."

Buffy nodded, and tensed as she felt something she couldn't quite identify that urged her to bring her arm up, intercepting a bean bag in mid-air. With a somewhat triumphant expression, she fired the object back at the red haired martial artist's general position, and heard it smack into flesh.

"Good shot," Ranko observed. "Too bad you hit the wrong person."

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger!" Willow continued after the shorter redhead, "I come bearing information!"

Buffy immediately yanked off the mask covering her face, and saw Willow rubbing at the side of her nose, with Ranko sitting on the floor in front of her. "Sorry Will," she contributed. "She was supposed to catch any of them that were going to hit anything important."

"Hey, she's not breakable," Ranko defended herself. "Besides, friendly fire happens if you aren't careful."

"How am I supposed to be careful if I can't see?" The blonde Slayer objected, irritably.

Ranko shrugged. "Same way you caught those Chi charged beanbags."

"Chiwhat now?" Buffy asked, articulately.

Seeing that Ranko was about to go on some long explanatory rant, after all, she'd done so enough times herself, Willow cut in gently. "I've found the girl we're looking for."

"How's her neck?" Buffy asked, still unconvinced that Ranko hadn't just found another vampire who had been extra lazy in dragging herself off.

"Fine, other than the fact that it's broken," Willow returned, and started for the library's main area, where the computer was.

"I, um, think we pissed her off," Ranko muttered, sheepishly.

"We?" Buffy replied, evenly.

Ranko rolled her eyes. "Yeah, everything's my fault," she complained, as the two ventured over to where Giles and Xander were clustered around Willow, reading over the American redhead's shoulders.

Buffy took a place next to the brown haired boy, reading as well, when Ranko leaned a hand against the computer monitor, and it began to fizzle ominously.

"Whoops, forgot," she winced, withdrawing her hand and looking at it for a moment. Seconds later, she laid it back where it was, and the distortion vanished. Willow blinked at the other girl strangely for a moment, and Ranko shrugged sheepishly. "Chi don't like electronics for some reason," she explained. "So, what we got?"

"What do we have, dear," Nodoka gently corrected. "Now, Willow, what have you found?"

"Well, we have one missing dead girl, who was traveling with two others when they got into a car accident. They were coming back from a football game here when someone ran them off the road, and they all died from injuries sustained in the crash." Willow specified, running a finger along a line of text on the screen.

"Okay, so definitely not vampires," Buffy said, shaking her head. "That means... what?"

"Night of the living cheerleaders?" Xander suggested, with an expression on his face that was a rather disturbing mixture of several emotions, including intrigue and disgust.

"I highly doubt they're living," Nodoka contributed, frowning.

"Bad movie joke," Buffy explained.

"Hey, that was a classic of zombie film making!" The brown haired boy protested indignantly, "A Hallmark of the twentieth century!" Willow nodded in agreement.

"Hmm, perhaps I should see it?" The Smith matriarch thought, interested, before Giles coughed quietly.

"Mrs. Smith, we have things to do," he said, tentatively, resolving to advise her against Xander and Willow's taste in movies as soon as possible.

"Oh," the auburn haired woman said, suddenly looking guiltily towards Ranko and back to Giles. "Of course."

Buffy and her two friends exchanged rapid glances, which flew over the heads of both the adults and Ranko, before the aforementioned redhead cleared her throat. "So, um, how do we figure out if these are zombies, then?"

"Well, a solitary zombie won't really do any good, so our most practical option would be to, um, dig up the graves of the other victims in this incident and see if they are gone as well," Giles contributed.

"Grave robbing party?" Xander asked, rubbing his hands together. "What types of snacks should I bring?"

"Ooh!" Willow began excitedly. "What about those little powdered doughnuts?"

"Never had those before," Ranko said, "They any good?"

Willow nodded excitedly, and Nodoka looked at the group, only slightly disturbed. "Does this happen often?" She asked, looking over at Giles, who just shrugged.

"Okay, so tonight we go to the graveyard to check out our other two cheerleaders, and remember, it's BYOS," Buffy said, nodding.

"Bee why oh ess?" Ranko asked confused.

"Bring your own shovel," Xander chipped in helpfully.

Ranko nodded. "Damn it, thought I was done with this crap after that time in..." she cut herself off, flinching. "If I get cursed this time, I'm blamin Summers."

"Okay, sounds fair," Buffy agreed, before looking up to the clock. "Also, a class I can actually pay attention to is starting in five minutes, so..."

The others nodded, and as Willow printed the information she'd found on the computer, the other students headed for the door. Suddenly, Ranko stopped and blinked. "Oh, yeah," she exclaimed, sticking a hand into one of her pockets and withdrawing a black leather glove with a thin, but still substantial silver cross on the back. "Here," she said, tossing it to Buffy.

"Huh?" The blonde asked, having clearly spent too much time around the Japanese girl.

"Just backhand people with it. If it burns, they're vampires," The short redhead said, smiling at her own ingenuity. "If not, stop beatin 'em up."

Buffy looked between the glove and the girl who had given it to her, before blinking, and remembering a certain cross shaped scar on Angel's cheek the night before. "Wait, you didn't test this on..." She started, her eyebrow twitching.

"What, the vampire I was waiting for was late," Ranko complained, crossing her arms irritably.

"That doesn't..." the blonde Slayer started, before Willow poked her shoulder and pointed at the clock. Huffing, she glared. "We'll talk about this later."

Ranko shrugged and walked off to class.

HR.

"Y'know, I'm pretty sure this is against the religion I'm supposed ta be a part of," Ranko grumbled, as she heaved a shovel full of dirt over one shoulder.

"Same here, but you don't see me complaining," Xander replied from next to her, until the redhead gave him an incredulous look. "Okay, so you don't see me complaining MUCH," he qualified.

"Yes, well, we're almost there, keep going!" Giles proclaimed from the other side of the grave. "I doubt they buried her too much deeper."

"Well, with the average depth of the graves around here, probably not," Buffy contributed, from where she was sitting with Willow and Nodoka nearby, powdered doughnut in hand.

"Tell me again," Xander huffed, as he threw another load of dirt out of the hole, "Why you aren't helping here?"

"Aw, but this is a job for the big, strong men," Willow said, taking a bite out of her own doughnut. "And Ranko, of course."

"Hey! What's that supposed ta mean?" The Japanese redhead snapped, not sure what part of the comment had pissed her off the most, at this point, and driving her shovel down into the hole with a loud crack of splintering wood. "Hey, think we got it," she chirped, happily.

"Okay, so, do we want to find a body or an empty grave?" Xander asked, dubiously, looking down at the lid of the pine box that they'd just uncovered.

"Hoping for the body," Ranko confessed. "Zombies always suck."

"Zombies always... you know what, I don't want to know," Willow decided resolutely, before finishing off her doughnut and cup of tea, standing to walk up next to the hole. "I'd go for the empty grave, then at least we know what's going on."

Xander and Giles nodded, but Buffy shuddered, even as she jumped down into the grave herself, grabbing one side of the coffin lid and yanking rapidly upward. With a splintering crack, the lid flew off, out of the ground and landed on the grass nearby. "Um, oops?" she muttered, and then looked down to see that there was no body there.

"Great, knew I shouldn'ta said anything," Ranko grumbled, as the blonde Slayer lept from the hole.

"Well, now we know," Xander said, shaking his head. "Any of you guys got your zombie survival packs ready?"

"Xander, three people isn't a zombie apocalypse," Willow grumbled, as the brown haired boy started folding his camp shovel and stuffing it into a bag.

"Well, it... it could turn into one," he tried to justify.

"We're the group trying to stop that, remember?" Buffy asked, rolling her eyes.

"Oh..." Xander said, looking like a kicked puppy. "But... zombies..."

"No!" Buffy snapped, authoritatively.

"You know," Willow observed, "if you actually thought about your science fair project as much as you do about zombie preparedness..."

"Hey, that's it, Will! I'll do my science project on Zombies!" Xander exclaimed. "We'll have some experience after this."

"Very funny," the American redhead said, as the group started walking off, not really caring that they'd left an open grave behind, and were leading one of the cemetery's maintenance staff a short bit closer to a stress caused heart attack. "Ranko, Buffy, tell me you two have thought about your projects?"

"Uh..." Both Slayers said in unison, "Tomatoes?"

Willow groaned.

HR.

"Okay," Ranko recapped, as she, Buffy, Xander, Willow and Cordelia stood in the library. "Buffy heads to Chris's place, and I go to Eric's. You guys go get Giles and Mom from wherever they've gone, right?"

The others nodded, and quickly left the library, splitting into two groups. As Ranko and Buffy headed for the front of the building, they heard the sound of someone very irritably stomping towards them. "Smith!" He barked, causing both the redhead and the blonde to turn towards him with guilty looks on their faces.

"Did I say Summers?" the man snapped, "Shoo."

"Woof woof," Buffy muttered, too low for the older man to hear, and turned to Ranko. "I'll check both stores for that, um, purse you want," she offered. "Don't worry."

"Uh," Ranko said, not getting it for a moment, but finally the penny dropped and she nodded. "Yeah, sure," she said, gratefully. Turning to Principal Snider, she asked, "Somethin wrong, sir?"

"Yes, there's something wrong, and I'd like to talk about it in my office," the balding man snapped and turned, starting off and expecting the student to fall in behind him. Ranko shrugged and did so, wondering how she could get away from him to help the others stop the bad Frankenstein ripoff that was going on.

Half an hour later, the girl's hopes were getting rather lower, as she sat in a chair in front of the principal's desk, and he leaned forward across it. "I still don't get what the deal is," she complained. "So, I ran sixteen laps in twenty minutes. What's so hard to believe about that?"

"Now, now, Miss Smith, do you really expect me to believe that?" Snyder said, shaking his head with an expression that was half-way between exasperation and irritation.

At the moment, the redhead was rather conflicted. On one hand, she'd been accused of somehow cheating or bribing a teacher, which really screwed with her honor, but on the other, there were some weird necromancer people loose around the school, and she had to find them. At the moment, she was honestly thinking about telling the older man that she had faked it somehow, just to get out of this conversation, even if her pride as a martial artist would never forgive her for it. "Look, it ain't all that unreasonable," she complained. "A buncha athletes can run a mile in five minutes. It's all about how ya pace yourself and how good your control is."

"Yes, Miss Smith, athletes. Trained, skilled athletes who have worked their entire lives to get that way, not petite Japanese schoolgirls with barely any muscle on them," the man said condescendingly.

Ranko's eyebrow twitched rapidly, and she began to wonder if she'd put too much stock in his ability as a principal being directly related to the lack of a palm tree on his head. "We respect the laws of physics and probability around here, missie," the man continued, apparently still ranting.

"Wait," Ranko said, somewhat incredulously. "Yer living in a town where vampires run 'round every night, and you're worried about probability?"

This apparently struck a cord in Snyder, as his face began to turn an interesting shade of off-red. "Vampires! Not another one with vampires! There are no vampires, Miss Smith, just like there aren't any phoenixes, or dragons, or mermaids. Now, stop living in the land of fantasy, and..."

He was cut off, as the phone next to his desk rang, and he picked it up. "Hello?" he snapped, ignoring Ranko for a second. "It's what? Yes, well, I've got a student here who I have to deal with, and... already half-way through the first quarter? I... One's missing?" His eyebrow twitched. "I understand," he said, looking grave and truly disappointed.

Slowly hanging up the phone, he turned to Ranko. "Well," he said, his voice seeming to catch in his throat. "It seems that I don't have time to deal with this... idiocy at the moment, Miss Smith, however I do need to deal with you." He crossed his arms, and looked steadily at her. "Do you still insist that you ran four miles in twenty minutes?"

Ranko shrugged. "Um, yeah?" She asked, confused by his sudden mood change.

The man smiled wickedly. "How would you like to get out of detention?"

HR.

The Slayer and her friends stared into the crackling, burning mess that had once been one of the school's old portable science labs, not entirely sure what to feel. Sure, Daryl had been pretty screwed up at the end, but they had just seen someone die, sort of, and Chris was kneeling on the ground in front of them, his eyes wide in shock and horror, two streams of tears falling.

"Well, that's..." Buffy started, unsure of what to say.

"Over?" Cordelia suggested, from where she was standing nearby, wrapped in a sheet that she'd taken from the old lab.

"Yeah," Xander muttered, "it's definitely over."

From behind them, a new voice broke in. "Um, wow, I really missed something," Ranko muttered, following the column of smoke up into the sky, and the others turned to look at her. As they did, each had a slightly different reaction.

Willow just blinked several times, while pointing and opening and closing her mouth. Xander was staring with eyes the size of dinner plates, and Buffy and Ms. Callander were trying to hold back giggles. Of course, Giles was as stoic as ever, and Nodoka had a goofy, proud looking smile on her face.

"Why are you wearing my uniform?" Cordelia demanded, stomping up to the redhead and looking down on the yellow top and red skirt angrily.

"Believe me," Ranko muttered, "If I had a choice, I wouldn't be."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean? You don't like our uniforms?" The taller brown haired girl asked, affronted.

"I don't think I know how ta say 'No' loud enough to get my feelings across," the martial artist muttered. "Now, since everyone seems ta be all right, I'm gunna get changed outta this and fantasize about killing Snyder."

"Wonderful way to pass time," Xander nodded, only to get a rather baleful glare as the Japanese girl stomped off.

END.

Note: We had to get some episodes out, but didn't wanna make the new character swipe everyone's thunder, so we decided to write 'Some Assembly Required' as a sort of background, comedy focused story. Think of it kinda like early season Zeppo. Sorry if it seemed off, we promise that 'School Hard' will be a lot more fun, and we're headed for a major divergence point pretty quick.

On that note, we've got some plans for later on that can be left or taken, and are likely, in our opinion, to make things more amusing. The problem is that there's a good likelihood they will shred the fic's seriousness quotient to tiny, microscopic, little, infinitesimal shards of its former, already small, self.

Is this a problem?

Anyhow, tell us what you think of the chapter or what we said here in a review.

Oh, right. Omake... yeah...

Omake.

"Okay," Ranko said, as she, Buffy, Xander, Willow and Cordelia stood in the library, "For those of you who haven't seen this episode of Buffy before, there's this crazy guy building a girl out of spare parts, and..."

"Ranko! The fourth wall!" Willow hissed, pointing to one of the library's shelves, which was developing several deep cracks along it, seemingly floating in front of the books.

"Um... whoops?" The Japanese redhead said, laughing nervously and scratching the back of her head.


	6. Chapter 6: From Bad To

Chapter 6: From Bad To...

Ranko blinked her eyes clear as her mother shook her into awareness from where she sat in front of the large meditation crystal, feeling unusually tired. "We done yet?" She asked, looking back to see her mother putting a small case away in a cupboard.

"Yes Ranko-chan, we're done," the auburn haired woman answered, and the redhead stood slowly, looking around the living room of her house for a moment, and her eye catching again on the crystal.

"Sorry mom, but I really don't think this meditation's working ta refill my Chi reserves any faster," she confessed. Admittedly, the item had acted as a pretty good meditation aid, but hadn't made as large a difference as her mother seemed to think it should.

"Please, just let me try to help," the older woman said, though her face contorted oddly as she said it. "Just a few more sessions, and if it still hasn't worked, I'll let you go back to doing it your way."

The martial artist nodded. After all, it really didn't take much from her own routine, other than the balance practice from doing it while standing on her head, and she knew that Nodoka felt at least a little guilty for what had happened to her Chi three months before. "I'm gunna go up and finish my science project," she said, walking out of the living room just in time to miss Nodoka's long, depressed sigh.

HR.

"Okay, so the body produces an electromagnetic field that you can learn to control and manipulate with enough training," Ranko started reading carefully from a set of notes Willow had helped her compile, which was sitting behind a large, black box with a light bulb suspended in its center by two bronze wires.

"I see," her science teacher said dubiously, from where he was standing next to an equally dubious principal Snyder. "I hope you realize that if you mention midichlorians, you're going to fail."

"What?" Ranko asked, blinking confused.

"Never mind, just show us your experiment," Snyder said, not willing to admit that he hadn't gotten the reference either. Ranko nodded, and placed her hands over small, hand-shaped aluminum foil sections on either side of the box, before a small aura of blue light, almost invisible, began to form around them.

Within moments, the bulb in the middle of the box was glowing cheerfully at its usual forty watt intensity, and the science teacher was peering interestedly at the gap between the girl's hands and the box, noting that it was too large for an electrical current to jump without arcing and at least frying some skin.

"Yes, yes, very nice trick," Snyder said, waving his hand. "Where did you hide the battery?"

Ranko's eyebrow twitched. "There's no battery," she growled, and the blue light around her hands flared, causing the light bulb to flash extremely brightly before shattering.

The pigtailed martial artist grimaced at what was left of her project, before falling slightly sideways and catching herself on the table. "Damn, didn't wanna slip that bad," she muttered, irritably.

"Well, um, yes," the science teacher said. "I'll have to study this device for, um, just in case there's some cheating involved," he quickly scooped up the box, looking as though it would run away if he didn't. "In the meantime, that was a very fascinating demonstration, and I will expect you to have the written report in by tomorrow afternoon."

As the slightly younger man ran off, Snyder narrowed his beady eyes at Ranko and scowled. "I've told you before, stop doing the impossible," he snapped, before turning and stalking off.

HR.

"Okay, so how'd you do?" Xander asked, as he chucked his science project, a decomposing piece of cow meat that he'd been studying, into the nearest garbage can.

"That should really go into a bio-hazard container," Willow mentioned, before shrugging. "They're fruit flies, they grew. I got a good grade, not much more to say."

"No real need to ask how hers went," the brown haired boy commented, gesturing over to the table where the group had all agreed to sit, where Ranko was laying face-down, blissfully asleep.

"I don't think that's the science project," Willow shook her head. "She's been like that for the past few days."

"Maybe she's narcoleptic," Xander offered. "That would be great. A medical excuse to fall asleep in class," he sighed dreamily.

"And to fall asleep in the middle of a battle against a Vamp," Buffy said, as she approached from behind the other two, still carrying the diagram of the inside of a fruit that she'd just finished showing off. "As for sleeping beauty over there, she hasn't helped me train recently either."

"Sleeping beauty? You mean if I give her a kiss she'll wake up?" Xander asked, curiously.

"Xander..." Willow started.

"Oh, right, you've got to do it," he continued, snapping his fingers, before he got slapped in the back of the head by Buffy, who then walked over and shook Ranko's shoulder.

"Ya stupid panda, go 'way. I wanna sleep," the redhead grumbled, fortunately in Japanese.

"Did she just say something about Pandas?" The blonde slayer asked.

"I think she just called you a stupid one," Willow offered. "If badly translated fansubs are any indication."

"You watch anime?" Xander asked surprised.

"I wanted to see the ending to Sailor Moon," Willow sulked.

Suddenly, Ranko flinched, shot up to a sitting position, and started shivering. "The cats," she muttered. "Damned talking cats."

"Wow, that worked," Xander said, saluting the American redhead. "So, now that everyone's awake and aware, what do we plan on doing tonight?"

"Why, the same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world!" Willow exclaimed, causing Xander to look at her, hurt.

"I'm Pinky?" He demanded.

"Can we get away from cultural references I barely know?" Buffy asked, ignoring how Willow was now humming to herself. Ranko nodded in agreement.

HR.

"I hate American traffic," Spike muttered, as the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' sign's fragments fell behind his car. "Always driving on the wrong bloody side."

"Are we there yet?" Drusilla asked from the passenger seat, where she was gazing out the window at the few people who were stupid enough to wander around at night.

"Where's that warehouse? I knew I shoulda killed that gas station attendant," the white haired vampire grumbled, reading the street signs as he tore along the road. "Ah, there it is!" He finally exclaimed, after another five minutes of driving, and skidded to a stop in front of the main door.

"All right, you wait out here and I'll see about a place to stay," Spike said, opening the door and stepping out of the car. Drusilla looked like she was going to say something, but suddenly snapped her mouth closed just after opening it, and began to grin like an idiot.

Spike really didn't like it when that happened, as it usually meant that he'd have to kill a good deal of people he didn't really feel like killing, and something would likely blow up. He hoped it wasn't his new car, as he quite liked it.

Trying to pretend he'd never seen that smile, the British vampire started towards the warehouse, throwing the doors open as dramatically as he could, and hoping that his trench coat was flapping behind him.

As the group of vampires within studiously ignored him, he walked up behind them, listening as one bragged about the Crucifixion. "Believe me," the man said, "I can destroy both of them. It'll be the most bloody death you've ever seen."

"Well, that can't be too hard," Spike cut in. "How old's this kid, ten?"

The man who had been talking, as well as several other vampires, turned towards the intruder angrily. "Who are you, and how dare you not show respect to the Anointed One?"

"Oh! The anointed one, I'm terribly sorry about that, I could have sworn you were taller," Spike said, tilting his head to the side. "My name's Spike, and I would be honored to help you kill anyone you need dead. Or more dead, if necessary." He gave the one who'd confronted him a meaningful look.

"You... you're challenging me? I... how dare..." The man sputtered, before the Anointed One raised a hand.

"You believe you can kill two Slayers at once?" He asked, levelly.

"Two Slayers at once?" Spike parroted, his eyebrow raising. "I'm sorry, but with all due respect, are you all daft? Slayers, you know, 'the one girl in all the world to be pinned to a tree by Spike,' Keyword being ONE!"

"Are you questioning me?" The anointed one demanded. "There are two Slayers in this city, destroying our kind, and one of them destroyed the Master."

"Oh, well, of course I'm not questioning you, oh Anointed One," Spike said, his fingers crossed behind his back, "but..."

"Excuse me?" A dreamy sounding female voice came from the entrance, and everyone turned to see Drucilla walking into the room.

Spike quickly made his way across to her, ignoring everyone else there, and rested one hand on her shoulder. "Love, I thought I asked you to stay in the car until I could convince these nice men to let us stay here?"

"I was cold," the dark haired vampire muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and shivering. Spike quickly took off his coat, wrapping it around the girl's shoulders, before turning back to the anointed one's group.

"So, here's how I'm gunna do things," he said, loudly. "I get rid of your Slayers," he rolled his eyes at this, "and you let Dru and me stay around. Sound fair?"

The anointed one thought for a moment, and then nodded. After all, this new Vampire was incredibly annoying, but if he could defeat the Slayer, he deserved some leeway, and if he couldn't, he'd be dead.

"Great then," the blonde man said. "I'll prepare my plan for St. Vigius night. Now, come on Dru, let's find a place to set up."

Drusilla nodded, before kissing Spike's cheek, incidentally leaving a small bite mark, and wandering off in a random direction.

HR.

"Okay, so tell me again why we're doin this?" Ranko muttered, as she began to fill in the letter "P" in the parents teacher interview banner.

"Because if we don't, I get expelled," Buffy replied, from where she was working on the N.

"Well, that's a good enough reason," Xander contributed. "Still doesn't explain where your co-organizer ran off to."

Willow shrugged. "She's known for attending some pretty wild parties, maybe something like that made her late?"

Ranko grimaced. "Don't get how they could put you on the same level as this other girl. She sounds like a real great student," she muttered, sarcastically.

"Well, I did burn down the science lab three weeks ago, even if it probably was the cigarette smoking mice."

"Those mice should know better!" Willow asserted. "They'll get cancer."

"Willow, it was us. The Frankenstein guy, remember?" Buffy asked, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, right..." Willow replied. "It was a joke... really."

"We believe you Will," Xander said, clamping one hand down on her shoulder, and then wincing as he pulled it back to reveal a red hand print on her t-shirt. Quickly backing away, he hoped that she wouldn't notice.

"Well, at least nothing's happened since then, right?" The American redhead asked, causing both the Japanese one and the blonde to slap their foreheads.

"You had to say it," Ranko grumbled, as she grimaced at a dot of paint on her nose. The paint, had it been able, would have grimaced right back.

"Yeah, now something's probably gunna happen. Giles was telling me about the night of Saint someone or other a few days ago, and how vampires love to come out in force then."

"What, are they gunna invade the school tomorrow night?" Xander asked, shaking his head.

"Knowing my luck?" Ranko asked, as she yawned.

"If it's anything like Buffy's... I'll start whittling stakes." The brown haired boy winced.

Buffy nodded. "And Mom's been after me about my grades," she sighed. "I'm probably going to spend tonight studying French. At least then I might know how to count to ten."

"I thought you were going to the Bronze with the rest of us," Willow asked, confused. "You know, to relax a bit? Maybe meet up with Angel?"

"Well, you know studying is more important than relaxation!" Xander proclaimed.

"I'm going," The Summers girl proclaimed. "Eat, Drink and dance with Angel, for tomorrow, I am expelled."

"Very pessimistic attitude you have there, Miss Summers," Principle Snyder said, from where he was looking over the Banner they were all working on.

Ranko jumped at the voice, sending a small dob of paint off course, and cursed to herself for letting someone that slow and lumbering sneak up on her, while Buffy whirled around to face him. "Um, hello sir, we're, I mean I'm, working on the decorations."

"I see," Snyder nodded. "Then you aren't getting your friends to help since your partner 'ditched' you?"

"No, of course not!" The blonde exclaimed, as both Ranko and Willow hid brushes behind their backs. "She's just, um, gone to the art room to get more paint."

As she spoke, Xander, who was behind Snyder at this point, started shaking his head and gesticulating wildly with his arms. Buffy blinked at this rather odd display, until he finally gave up, pointing past her to the door. She gulped as she turned, noticing Sheila was standing there, her arms distinctly empty of paint.

"Um, so, there wasn't any more yellow in the art room?" The Summers girl asked, dashing over to the other and starting to rapidly think up a story. Nearby, even Ranko was wincing at the lie's transparency, though Snyder just sighed.

"All right Miss Summers, just remember that tomorrow had better be perfect for the parents."

"Of course, sir," Buffy exclaimed as the older man wandered off.

"Wow, thanks for covering for me," Sheila said, stretching a little and walking towards the banner. "Snyder's such a rodent."

Nearby, Ranko snorted. "I wouldn't be talkin like you're better than him if I were you," she commented, acidly. "At least he's an asshole for what he figures are good reasons."

"What?" Sheila demanded, before Buffy raised a hand between the two.

"That was random," she muttered. "Ranko, what was that about?"

The redhead shook her head. "Sorry, didn't mean to say that out loud."

"Yes, because that makes everything better," Xander muttered, though he was surprised to note that Willow had apparently nodded in agreement with the other redhead's statement. He wondered, perhaps, if it was some form of secret society of red haired girls. He shuddered. Everything suddenly made a lot more sense.

"I gotta go wander around," Ranko said, as she glanced towards the window, where the sun was going down, and broke the uncomfortable silence that had fallen after Xander's comment.

"Oh, yeah, thanks for..." Buffy started, biting her tongue before she could say anything too stupid. "Just get some stuff for me, all right?"

Ranko nodded, leaving the room, and Sheila quirked an eyebrow. "You're getting stuff?" She asked, "What kind of stuff? Is it good?"

All three of the others looked at her for a moment, confused, before Buffy caught on. "Not that kind of stuff," she muttered. "Now, can we finish this thing up so I can hit the Bronze and fail learning French miserably?" The others nodded and got back to work.

HR.

Giles watched, mildly disturbed and also mildly fascinated as his fellow watcher paced a small rut in the library's flooring, while reading a text that they had both been given involving the night of Saint Vigius. "They have to have planned this," she growled.

"It's doubtful," Giles disagreed. "We only now know of it because Ms. Calendar brought it to our attention."

"But I called and told them, and they declared that it has to happen. It's like they're trying to get rid of her." Nodoka grimaced.

The Brit sighed, taking off his glasses. "Nodoka," he said, as one Watcher to another, "I'm not sure what we can do about this. You've already started the preparations, and given the time left, even if you stop now she won't be at full strength." He shook his head. "Besides, if you stop..." He trailed off, not having to mention what would happen next.

The Smith matriarch let off a curse that her husband had once used when he thought she wasn't around, and chucked the book onto the table in the middle of the library, provoking an almost unnoticeable wince from the librarian.

She was honestly completely unsure of what to do. Originally, she'd picked Ranko due to her high likelihood of surviving the test set before every Slayer on her eighteenth birthday, but with her Chi locked away, she was beginning to show fatigue during her nightly patrols, still showing no intention of stopping. "I wonder," she thought, walking over to the case full of syringes that she'd brought with her, and picking one of them up.

Looking into it, she could see the rest of the library through the translucent blue liquid, and striding over to the sink in the corner of the room she depressed the plunger until the syringe was mostly empty. "Do you have any blue food colouring?" She asked, levelly.

Giles smiled. "I'll see what I can dig up," he promised.

HR.

"Je neas pas pulet Francais?" Buffy choked out, as she squinted down at her linguistics book.

Willow desperately tried to hide a giggle, apparently succeeding, but this didn't stop her blonde friend from growling in annoyance and poking her book angrily. "Why'd you do that?" The redhead asked, curiously.

"Ranko told me she knows someone who can make stuff explode by poking it," the Summers girl confessed. "It'd be great if this thing could just burst into paper shreds."

"And you'd have Giles angry at you again," Willow replied. "Besides, you, um, got your point across with your last sentence."

"Really?" Buffy asked, curiously.

"Oh yes, definitely," Willow nodded rapidly.

"In that case, I'm going to go get something to drink and dance a while in celebration," Buffy decided.

"Sounds like a good idea," Xander chimed in from behind her, holding a drink, as Willow rolled her eyes in exasperation. Then again, she really couldn't blame Buffy for her reaction, as the stress of being the Slayer coupled with school would likely drive her insane if it was her problem.

"I'll just stay here and finish up the French homework, then," she decided, pulling Buffy's homework book across the table to start answering the questions, mimicking the blonde's handwriting scarily well. Not, of course, that it was any harder than Xander's.

As she was trying to figure out how to write a rather convoluted sentence, a voice interrupted her train of thought. "Oi, I need to use the phone! Some maniac's grabbed someone outside and it looks like he's trying to bite 'er!" The thickly accented voice called.

She immediately jumped up and headed for the door, as Buffy did the same and Xander was running the opposite way for some reason, though when the two reached the entrance, they both stopped and blinked rapidly.

"How many of ya idiots do I have ta put down in a night?" An irritated man was ranting, as he held a nonplussed vampire up by the collar, and reared back to plunge a hand into its chest.

As he pulled the appendage back, he blinked at it. "That was only supposed to be a straight punch," he muttered, watching as the vampire crumbled to dust.

"Well, that's just great. You want to punch him in the chest and you kill 'im instead. Why do all you goodie two shoes have to be so bloody incompetent?" The man who had informed Buffy's group about the vampire in the first place muttered, somehow appearing out of a shadow near the door. "And either you're the ugliest bird I've ever seen or you aren't the Slayer, so where is the bint?"

"I'm right here," Buffy said, confused but still not willing to take an insult, even if she wasn't precisely sure what a Bint was. Catching a stake tossed hurriedly to her by Xander, she asked, "Who wants to know?"

"Someone who's very outnumbered at the moment," the white haired man said, "so you'll find out on Saturday, when me 'n the blokes come 'round to kill you."

"Um, so what's ta stop us from killing ya right now?" Ranma asked, from where he was leaning on the wall where the other Vampire had dusted only a short time ago.

"Well, I could do this," Spike replied, grabbing two garbage can lids from either side of himself and chucking them at the two most obvious threats before running as quickly as he could into a nearby alleyway. Both the Slayer and the new guy started running after him, but Buffy lost track when she hit a high fence at the end of the alley, taking a few precious seconds to scale it that both the vampire and the other pursuer used to get out of her sight.

"Damn it," she muttered, "I thought the Slayer was supposed to be the strongest anti-vamp game in town? When do I get my super-leaping?"

HR.

Kendra landed on the roof of the warehouse as her quarry continued to flee. It had scurried up the side of a building in the misconception that it would be safe up on the roof. Unfortunately, for it, Kendra had used the building's drain pipe to launch her already impressive leap still higher.

The abilities that came with her Slayer activation were, as far as her watcher knew, far from normal. She was both faster and stronger than the average Slayer, which she would never complain about, and had one other abnormal ability Mr. Zabuto knew nothing about.

Finally, after a number of hours, her prey was cornered. "Prepare to die, demon," she hissed.

"But I didn't do anything!" the young demon protested. "I'm herbivorous!"

"You are a demon, and so you will die," Kendra stated before a blinding flash of blue lit up the night sky. Once the light faded, all that was left of the demon was a few bones. "That is one more demon the world will worry about no longer."

HR.

Twenty minutes after starting her chase of Spike, Ranko was annoyed, wet, female, and panting for breath on the roof of a warehouse several blocks from the Bronze. "How'd a full bucket of water get up here, anyhow?" She demanded, glaring at said object, which she'd kicked over moments before.

Staggering slightly, the short redhead allowed herself to slump to the ground, and glared down at one shaking hand. There was something wrong with her. She'd figured this out a few days before, when she'd almost broken a hand punching a vampire in the jaw on a graveyard patrol shared with Buffy. Now, after a week of heavy rains and shared patrols, she'd gone out in male form, and accidentally eviscerated a vampire by using the same amount of Chi that she now normally needed to give her hits any strength at all.

Before, she'd begun to tolerate, and even somewhat like, her curse because it gave her a few advantages without causing any serious problems, but ever since her mom had shown up, it had become disturbing again, and now it seemed that there was a real, palpable difference between the two forms that wasn't being made up for by an offsetting advantage. "What the hell's going on?" She muttered, before clenching her fist and slamming it into the building's roof. Wincing, she looked at it, noting that her knuckles were cracked and bleeding.

HR.

"Look, Mom, I'm fine," Ranko protested, As she finished off the last of her dinner, sitting across the table from her Watcher and mother.

Nodoka shook her head. "That's not what I've heard," she contradicted. "Mr. Giles told me that you've been falling asleep in classes recently."

The redhead grimaced. She admitted that, due to the odd problems she'd been having with her muscles' responsiveness, she'd been using a lot of her limited Chi reserve just to keep hunting Vampires, but now that she'd discovered that her male form was as strong as ever, she felt fully capable of going out again. "That won't happen again, and besides, Buffy's gotta go to the parent teacher thing tonight, so no one's gunna be out looking for vamps."

The auburn haired woman frowned. She had to admit that the younger girl had a point, but she also knew what was coming, and having Ranko near collapse on Saturday wouldn't be a good thing. "The town can go without a Slayer for one night," she said, uncertainly. "If you burn yourself out, you won't be any good to anyone, will you?"

The younger martial artist huffed. "I ain't gunna," she started, before getting a steady look. "I'm not going to burn myself out," she corrected.

"That's right, because you're going to stay home," Nodoka declared, grasping her cloth wrapped bundle. Pulling herself together, she made a decision. "Ranko, you've been treating me as your mother, and I'm worried about you. You're like my daughter, and I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you. Promise me, daughter to mother, that you won't leave when I go to the school tonight."

The pigtailed girl stopped for a moment, and then sighed. It looked like the auburn haired woman was really serious about this, for some reason, and she nodded reluctantly.

"Don't worry, everything will be fine tonight," Nodoka reassured gently.

HR.

"Everyone stay calm, we're going to be all right once the police get here," Principal Snyder said, as he, along with Nodoka, Joyce Summers and several other parents stood in the school's staff room, having just been locked in there by Buffy.

"How can you say that?" One of the men objected. "Those... things out there, they... did you see their eyes? And they dove through the windows without even slowing down!"

"Yes, a gang on PCP can do amazing things, but they shouldn't be able to get in here," the balding man assured quickly.

"Gang on PCP?" Nodoka asked, disbelieving. She wasn't sure what PCP was, precisely, but assumed it was some form of narcotic. "You honestly expect to explain this away that easily?"

"That is what happened, Ms. Smith, now please be quiet," Snyder snapped. "We need to stay calm until help gets here, and wild accusations won't help. They're just doped up gang members in fright masks."

Around that time, an axe decided to embed itself into the door, demonstrating that their little room was a lot less secured than they had assumed. The axe withdrew, before slamming into the door again, widening the hole slightly.

"We have to get out of here!" a large man exclaimed, climbing onto a table to pry the shutters away from the window.

"You can't do that! Buffy said to stay here," Joyce said, urging the man to stay inside.

Clearly panicked and not thinking straight, Snyder sneered, "She's just a student. What does she know?" Climbing up on to the table with the other man, he proceeded to help him bend the metal shutters out of the way.

"That is a spectacularly bad idea, you know," Nodoka observed. The men ignored her and continued to work on the window. "It is rather likely that they would be outside as well."

Unfortunately for the first man, Nodoka was right, and the vampires outside dragged him to a grisly death. Snyder backed away in shock while Joyce stepped up to the window, bending the shutters to partially cover the opening.

"They pulled him," one of the other parents said weakly. "Right through the window."

"Unfortunately, some people refuse to listen to logic," Nodoka sighed, and began pulling small, white sheets of paper out of her kimono's folds. Nearby, Joyce looked at her, both curious and desperate for anything that would take her mind off of the current situation while her daughter was out there.

"What are you doing?" She asked, while Nodoka clasped one of the papers between her hands, and it began to glow before she walked over and stuck it to the compromised window.

HR.

She paced. It was about all she could do. Though she was tired, every time she tried to go to sleep, her agitation would pull her back out of bed. Something was wrong, and she could feel it like a constant itch in the back of her mind, as though her danger sense had finally somewhat adapted to the little town on the Hellmouth, and was telling her that something serious was going on.

Sighing, she looked out of her window, and saw nothing, as usual. The streets were quiet, and even emptier than usual given half the younger population of the town was at the school, and most of the parents as well.

Still, that nagging feeling at the back of her mind told her that something was going to happen. Growling, she turned away and walked back to her bed, slumping onto it. "I promised Mom," she muttered, sourly. "No Slaying tonight, I gotta get some sleep." She curled up on her side again, not bothering to get under the covers, and rolled around restlessly for several minutes before she found herself pacing again.

It only took her another five minutes to finally get fed up, and she left her bedroom, heading for the bathroom. One splash of water later, he was looking in the mirror, and feeling disgusted with himself for what he was about to do. Technically, he wasn't breaking the promise he'd given his mother. Her 'daughter' wasn't going to be out tonight, barring sudden rain showers, but he knew that he was violating the spirit of the promise completely.

Still, the feeling that something was going terribly wrong did not diminish, and he left the bathroom, determinedly heading for the front door.

HR.

"Oh, well this plan works I guess," Xander said, as Angel held him in a headlock, and the two started towards the school. When he'd been sent to find the ensouled vampire, being dragged back by the throat hadn't been what he expected, but he had, after all, been bait before, and knew the role well.

He carefully angled his neck so that the other didn't 'accidentally' choke the life out of him, and hobbled towards the school building after him. That was, of course, up until Angel stopped, and the brown haired boy heard a voice that he didn't recognize.

"I knew you couldn't be trusted," a young man with a pigtail growled, from where he knelt on a wall nearby. "Let Xander go."

"What?" Angel asked, looking at the newcomer in surprise. "Look, this isn't what it looks like..."

Unfortunately, the pigtailed martial artist, who was already wound up from worry about his mother, didn't listen to this objection, and only noted that Angel wasn't loosening his grip on one of his friends. The idea of an ensouled vampire had always struck him as odd, and he'd been keeping an eye on the other ever since they'd met, but now, with his danger sense on high alert, he made the only decision that made sense and lunged forward, removing the vampire's hand from Xander's neck by force, and kicking him in the ribs, sending him staggering back several feet.

That blow was followed up moments later by three hard blows to the face, causing his nose to break. The vampire snarled, and his visage rapidly reshaped into its combat form, his nose snapping back into place as it did so. Seeing the other moving in for another attack, he had no choice but to retaliate, lashing out with a lightning fast foot sweep, which his opponent mostly got out of the way of, only catching a glancing blow across the knee.

His face setting into a serious mask, the martial artist lashed out with a high kick that almost connected with Angel's torso, before the vampire raised one arm, catching the leg on it and twisting to throw his opponent off balance, before bringing his own knee up into the Japanese boy's gut.

From the fence nearby, Xander watched this with something approaching confused awe. It looked vaguely like what happened when Buffy fought someone very powerful, but much more like a cheesy Jackie Chan movie as Angel flipped over his opponent's shoulders, only to have a back kick smash into his lower spine.

Five minutes later, the fight was still going on, though both combatants looked a little the worse for wear. Angel was badly bruised and had what looked like a broken arm, while his opponent had a split lip, was avoiding putting weight on his left leg, and was clutching his right hand to his ribs. Even so, he'd gotten a pointy bit of wood from somewhere, and as he reared back to throw it, and Angel was looking desperate enough to avoid being dusted that he would try something lethal, Xander finally intervened.

"Hey, stop!" He yelled, striding forward. Much to his surprise, both opponents froze, turning towards him with irritated, 'what do you want?' looks on their faces.

"Um, whoever you are," the not-so-innocent bystander started, "Angel and I were in the middle of a plan to distract this evil vampire named Spike when you showed up. I wasn't in any danger." After a second he muttered, "Probably."

"What?" Ranma asked, deadpan.

"That's what I was trying to say when you attacked me," Angel grumbled, setting his broken arm without even a flinch. "You could have spoken up sooner, Harris."

"Yeah, I could have," Xander agreed, but as he looked over the vampire's battered body, he grew an evil, and quickly hidden, smirk.

The Japanese martial artist leveled an irritated look at the brown haired boy, who backed up slightly. "We still have to stop Spike," Angel interrupted, causing Xander's face to go pale, and Ranma to blink.

"Who?" He asked, confused.

"An old friend of his who came to town," Xander explained. "He's at the school right now, and they sent me to get reinforcements."

"And you couldn't have told me before we wasted ten minutes on this fight?" Ranma demanded, turning on his heel and starting towards the school as quickly as he could with one injured leg.

Angel nodded in agreement, following the rapidly receding younger man.

HR.

When Ranma and Angel reached the school grounds, stopping at the outer edge of the front yard, they noticed immediately that several police cars had been pulled up there, and officers were patrolling the area. Fortunately, they also noticed that there was a group of parents and students clustered around the front doors, looking safe, if some of them were a little shaken.

Ranma started forward, before recalling that his mother had never seen him this way, and wondering what he should do. "Everyone seems safe," he muttered, unsure.

Angel nodded. "Buffy must have taken care of Spike herself," he said, sounding impressed. "So, do you want to tell me who you are and why you care so much about these people, and Harris, that you'd pick a fight with me?" He asked, shooting the martial artist a questioning glance.

Ranma was about to open his mouth and make some lame excuse, when the clock struck ten, and Sunnydale High's lawn sprinklers kicked in, dousing him and causing his curse to take effect.

Angel's eyebrow shot up as he saw the shift. "Well, that explains something," he muttered, as Ranko leapt clear of the stream of water, which smelled vaguely of chemicals. Tracking her jump to the sidewalk in front of the school, he walked up next to her and said, "You do realize I'll expect an explanation, and if I don't get it I'm informing Buffy and the others of what I already know, which isn't that good for you."

Ranko paled, throwing a glance towards her mother, who was leaving the school and accepting her katana back from a rather sheepish looking Joyce Summers. "Look, I'll explain tomorrow," she started, right before Nodoka caught sight of her.

"Ranko-chan?" The older woman exclaimed, shocked to see her. "What are you doing up?"

As the older woman made her way rapidly over to her, Ranko scratched the back of her neck. "Um, I heard the sirens, and figured that they were heading ta the school. What happened here?"

Nodoka frowned doubtfully. "You know you've still got some blood on your lip," she commented, and Ranko immediately brushed a hand across to check. Sighing, the Smith Matriarch clasped the younger girl's shoulder. "Ranko-chan, you're a terrible liar," she rebuked, "but I'm glad to see you after tonight."

"So, um, what happened?" the young martial artist asked, confused, as her mother started walking her down the street.

END.


	7. Chapter 7: Worst Case Scenario

Chapter 7: Worst Case Scenario.

"I can't believe the school's still open," Buffy muttered, as she stepped over a pile of debris that had, before the vampire attack earlier, been the cafeteria door.

Next to her, Ranko nodded. "Yeah. Well, I wasn't expectin the place to be closed, but I figured they'd hire contractors, at least."

The blonde Slayer looked oddly at her redheaded counterpart, before Ranko glanced past her, and a noticeably irritated look crossed her face. Tracing it, she noted Xander walking up to the two of them, though he would occasionally glance off at a pulverized door. "Hey," he called, waving. "Where's Will this morning?"

Buffy shrugged. "Haven't seen her," she admitted, "but she wasn't on the casualty list, so she should be around here somewhere, and why are you glaring like that, Ranko?"

Ranko shook her head. "It's not important," she answered, knowing that 'she' technically hadn't been there during the fight with Angel, but resolving to find a way to get back at the brown haired boy for his little stunt. "This place really got demolished," she noted. "Was that the library research table that was wedged in Principal Snyder's office doorway?"

"Hey, it kept them out," Buffy retorted irritably.

"That and your Mom swinging a katana like a baseball bat," Ranko muttered, as Willow came stomping down the hall towards them, wearing a wrinkled set of clothes, and with bags under her eyes comparable to Gosunkugi's. "Wow, what happened to you?" Ranko asked, before she could stop herself.

"I was locked in a closet with Cordelia all night," the normally timid girl growled, "Listening to her prey for salvation. She wouldn't let me open the door until the janitor came to let us out this morning."

"Oh," Buffy said, wincing. "Sorry, but that creepy British guy had us all tied up."

"It's no problem," Willow replied. "I didn't need my sanity or rest anyways."

"So, where is the wicked witch of the west this morning?" Xander asked, looking around nervously.

"She left as soon as we got let out, said something about how she refused to go to school in the same clothes two days in a row and how it was all my fault," the normally calm girl said, clenching her fist so tightly that it popped.

"Well, uh, at least we don't have the test we were supposed to today," Buffy offered, somewhat nervous at the redhead's uncommon behavior.

Willow frowned. "Great, and I spent all night reading the text book to try and ignore Cordelia's praying," she muttered, before turning and walking off.

HR.

"Took you long enough," Angel observed, as he leaned rather casually against the outside wall of the graveyard, Ranko stalking up to him. "I was about to go visit Buffy instead."

"Had to almost beg Mom to go on patrol tonight," the martial artist snorted. "She's been gettin pretty uneasy lately, and woulda demanded that I take Buffy or Xander with me if I hadn't run away first."

The vampire only nodded, before turning to look out over the graveyard for some of his not-so-nice kin to poke their heads out, and the area grew silent for a moment before he demanded, "Well? What kind of demon are you? I didn't taste anything in your blood last time at the Bronze."

"I ain't a demon," Ranko grumbled. "And don't call me a sorcerer, or you'll end up with a grave stone as a hat, preferably one with a cross on it."

"So... you use magic to change forms," the pale skinned man stated, rather than asking.

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'use,'" the redhead said. "It's a curse."

"And you or your Watcher didn't tell anyone because..." Angel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Mom doesn't know," Ranko confessed. "And you can't tell her."

The vampire rubbed his forehead. "All right, so you've got a curse that turns you into a guy, and the Watcher's Council, who probably raised you, doesn't know about it." He rolled his eyes. "I'm serious, I want the truth. If you're a threat to Buffy..." He started, a low growl starting in the base of his throat.

"Into a girl, actually," Ranko muttered, so softly that Angel almost missed it.

"What?" He asked, deadpan.

"I turn into a girl, I'm really a guy," the redhead repeated, this time with more clarification, "and I only found out about the whole Slayer thing when Mom showed up and recruited me for it a little over three months ago."

"Okay," Angel said. "That's either the truth, or you're a much better liar than I thought you were," he conceded, "but then it's really easy to look like you're bad at lying."

"Yeah, so of course I'd come in and make myself real obvious to the only group of demon hunters in the region if I were a demon," Ranko snorted.

"Worked for me,"Angel replied with a shrug. At Ranko's level look, he quickly amended, "Not that I plan on doing anything about it."

"Okay," Ranko sighed. "So we both got reasons not ta trust each other now, huh?"

Angel nodded.

"How about we go back to watching each other suspiciously 'n call it a night?" the martial artist suggested, perfectly used to that relationship due to years of living with her father, and later Mousse and Ryoga.

The pale skinned man's mouth quirked into a disbelieving half-grin. "You're not serious, are you?"

"What, I let a vampire run around loose, you deal with a Slayer who's actually a guy. Seems fair to me," Ranko replied.

"That's not the..." He started, and then sighed. "All right, it's sort of the same thing," he admitted, though he had a contemplative look on his face after he said it. "But you're probably not the Slayer."

"What?" Ranko asked, blinking.

"Slayer blood is kind of like a powerful stimulant to Vampires," he explained. "When I tasted your blood before, if it had been Slayer blood, I would have felt it."

"That doesn't make much sense," the redhead complained. "I mean the whole ritual, what it did to my Chi," she shook her head before mentioning the mind numbing pain.

Angel shrugged. "I honestly don't know a lot about Slayers. When they came around I usually tried to get out of the way, but I know all Slayers are female. I suppose it's possible that you've only got Slayer blood in this form, or the ritual didn't work."

Ranko shook her head. "It definitely did something," she ascerted, but wondered precisely what. It didn't really seem to make sense that a power that wanted her to destroy evil would take away her strength, especially to the level that it had been decreased lately, but the events of the actual ceremony were so blurred, and the detection spells had seemed to confirm it.

Blinking, she came upon an idea to prove it one way or another, and brought her right hand quickly down on a small jagged piece of stone on the top of the wall, opening up a small gash along her thumb.

As the thumb was thrust under Angel's nose, his eyes crossed and he blinked at it. "What?" he asked, confused.

"Blood," Ranko said, rolling her eyes. "If you start sucking, I break your jaw."

The pale man shook his head, wanting to grumble something about being a portable forensics lab, but caught a drop of blood in his mouth and tasted it. For a moment, the hunger rush through him, but he forcefully stomped it down. It was at about that point that the sensations from his mouth really started to filter through, and he blinked. "Um, why do you have huge quantities of a date rape drug in your system?" he asked, flatly.

"What?" The martial artist asked, pulling slightly too tight on the length of cloth she was wrapping around her finger. As she did so, one of the vampires who was supposed to show up tonight appeared behind her, looking very hungry, and she dismissively reached down, tossing her stake backwards.

As the newborn vampire puffed into dust, Angel couldn't help an involuntary wince, but continued regardless. "You've got a muscle relaxant in your blood. I recognize the taste of it because back in the eighteenth century, noblemen liked to catch women in taverns with it." He shrugged. "Has almost no effect on men, but weakens women dramatically. It has something to do with hormones."

"Someone's drugged me?" Ranko asked, disbelieving. "Damn, thought I got clear of Kodachi, though it would explain some things." She grimaced. "Ya know how long it takes to clear?"

"I'm not sure," the vampire admitted, and looked away. "I didn't exactly give them a chance to recover."

"Oh," the martial artist said, disturbed.

Angel was about to say something, though he wasn't sure what, to dispel the look on the redhead's face, when three shapes lurched their way from the ground in the grave yard the two had been looking into. He sighed, never having been so relieved to see newly risen vampires as he was right then, and hoisted himself over the wall behind Ranko, who had already pulled her spear from where she usually carried it across her back, and produced a flask of water from somewhere.

HR.

LeStat grinned from where he sat in his crate. The fools on the Council had been kind enough to give him a mouse. Getting an egg salad sandwich out of them was slightly more difficult, as he didn't actually need to eat. Still, persistent whining had done the trick, even if it had been rather degrading. While most vampires assumed that any ceremony worth its salt needed gallons of virgin blood, and where were you supposed to find that these days, hours of repetitive chanting, and dribbly candles that were more likely to burn the place down than anything else, he knew that all one really needed was a little quiet time with an egg, regardless of its state, and a little rodent blood, no more than an ounce.

Yes, the master vampire decided. The night of St. Vigius was going to be something special. A real once in an unlifetime event. How could he miss such an opportunity? He'd never had the chance to kill a Slayer before, and now seemed the perfect time, especially when he'd be at his strongest and she at her weakest. He may be a master vampire, but he hadn't gotten there by taking idiotically stupid risks, well there had been that time in Cleveland, but he preferred not to think about that travesty. He'd leave the risks to the fledglings, thank you very much.

Of course, there was always the slim chance that the Slayer would win, despite her complete lack of tools, but he would consider going out in such a blaze of glory to be acceptable, especially after certain recent events. One of those events was why he had forsaken the color red, as well as his last, and favorite, alias. He still had to wonder how in the name of everything holy and infernal that girl had gotten her hands on that flack cannon. He'd never seen a dust dispersal pattern quite like that before.

Still, he supposed he should get ready. He did so want to make a good impression on the girl. Such things were rather important, after all. It just wouldn't do for his dinner date to get the wrong idea. He was, after all, a gentleman, and he would not let it be said that he was rude to one such as the Slayer. Such actions were rather more fitting of the Scourge of Europe. Needlessly torturing your food was so blase. That wasn't. of course, to say that playing with one's food was out of the question.

A little wine, a little cheese, a little violin music, just a little something to help the atmosphere. Some vampires insisted that fear made the blood taste sweeter. LeStat agreed with that sentiment in so much as high emotion did make for tastier blood; he just found other emotions to be much more savory. The best meal he'd ever had was that mime girl he had gotten to laugh, though that might have just been the satisfaction of getting something other than a scream of agony out of one of those freaks.

There was one thing that LeStat had to wonder about in regards to this test, though. From what he had heard, there was a lot of brick laying being done, which probably meant that they were sealing the building, to either prevent himself or the Slayer from escaping. Considering that the Travers fellow running this whole scheme seemed to be something of a ponce, it was rather likely to be both. It did bring up an interesting question, though.

If the Council wished to test a Slayer's resourcefulness, why did it seem as though any object that could be used to demonstrate this trait was removed? Hell, his crate wasn't even made out of wood. It was some synthetic plastic material that was actually starting to give him hives. He supposed that it was to make him more irritable when he was finally let loose, or the Watchers were incompetent morons, but he was well used to such irritations, so that ploy, assuming it was one, was doomed to failure.

Ah, finally the crate opened, by remote, no less. Probably for the best. He would have hated to get blood all over himself before his big date. Hm, assuming the clock on the wall was right, he should still have at least an hour before the guest of honor would arrive. They must be expecting him to explore the house, possibly try to escape, before she was delivered. It could make a game of cat and mouse more entertaining, if he were into such things, but, as it was, he disliked such blatant mind games. It was rather lacking in class, after all. Maybe there was a book or something around here he could read while he waited. Maybe a nice bottle of wine. He could even share some of it with the Slayer before he killed her. So what if she was underage. It was not like she'd have time to get really drunk.

HR.

"I understand," Nodoka said, irritably, as she rested the phone against her ear. "I asked Ranko to be back for six thirty, but she's a teenager and it's the weekend. You expected compliance?"

She shifted the ear piece to her other ear, as she looked through the living room window. She did not want the girl walking in on this conversation, and besides, she wouldn't like anyone she cared about the opinion of to see her this annoyed. "Have you found a way for me to get her there?" She asked, jotting a note down on a slip of paper next to her. "What do you mean 'figure it out?' And how am I supposed to completely disarm her? She conceals a stake in her shirt during school."

"Yes, of course," she said, calming down slightly as the voice on the other end became rather irritated. "I think I see her coming, so I have to go."

The person on the phone said something else, but Nodoka didn't hear it as she slammed it down and sighed. She probably had another hour before Ranko came home, given the girl didn't wear a watch and tended to get distracted by her training. That meant an hour in which to think up a way to lure her adopted daughter to what could quite possibly be her death.

Nodoka was slightly off in her assessment of how much time she had, as Ranko's stomach drew her back home for some food about twenty minutes before the darkening sky would have.

As she heard the front door creaking open, the Japanese woman quickly snapped closed a book titled "How to Make Excuses for Dummies," and showing a panda paw holding up a wooden sign on the front.

"I'm home," the girl called casually, and Nodoka could hear her switching shoes.

"Welcome home," she called back, as Ranko entered the living room, and she observed with relief that the younger redhead had apparently not trained as hard as usual, given her lack of sweat. "You're back early," she noted.

Ranko shrugged. "Meditating on Chi flows can get really boring after a while," she explained, deciding not to mention that her meditations had been frequently interrupted by speculation on who, precisely, had been drugging her and what to do about it.

"Ah," the auburn haired woman nodded, and then took a deep breath. "Ranko dear, I received a call from an acquaintance of mine this afternoon," she started. "He wants us to visit him tonight."

"Huh?" the redhead asked, "Who?"

"He's... someone I knew from my school days," the Kimono clad woman explained. "I'd like you to dress nicely and be on your best behavior while there."

The redhead grimaced, looking down at her usual comfortable Chinese silks and imagining a Kimono, or something even worse. Seeing the look, Nodoka smiled. "Looking nice could consist of a nice blouse and slacks, if you don't try to conceal any weapons in them, and take off that glove of yours." The martial artist considered that for a moment, and her mother almost expected her to go and get her good kimono out of sheer bloody mindedness, but she eventually nodded.

"Sure, I'll get some of the stuff I got on that shopping trip," she commented. "It cost enough it should be nice."

Nodoka smiled in approval, and Ranko went off upstairs, returning a few minutes later in a plain white T-shirt and a pair of black slacks, her spear over her shoulder.

"Ranko?" The older woman asked, narrowing her eyes.

"I'll hide it before we get there, but it IS after dark, and this IS Sunnydale," the shorter girl countered.

"I suppose that will have to do," Nodoka agreed, leveling a glare at the phone for no reason Ranko could place. Nodding, she opened the front door and Ranko followed her out into the street.

HR.

"You sure your friend lives out here?" Ranko asked, as she looked around. She and the older woman were standing on a dimly lit side street, half way across town from the school.

"This is the address he gave, Nodoka answered, looking down at the paper she now held in her hand. Ranko just looked dubiously up at a line of darkened houses, their numbers only barely visible on rusted mail boxes.

"I'm guessing this is the 'quiet' district, " she muttered, stepping towards one of the houses. "You stay back here, I don't like this."

"Ranko dear, it's fine, now put that," The Watcher said gesturing to the spear, "away so that we don't give Mr. Travers a heart attack."

"I'm just gunna have a look around," the martial artist countered. "Somethin's giving me a bad feeling."

Nodoka wanted to object, but quite frankly the area was creeping her out as well, and she didn't know how to dissuade Ranko from her present, rather prudent, course of action without looking suspicious.

Worriedly, she watched as the girl slowly made her way to the porch of one of the houses, and peered into the window there. Seeing nothing but darkness, she approached the door and knocked on it, only for it to slide open and let dim light spill onto the porch.

Blinking in confusion, the short redhead stepped through the door, wondering how no light had come through the window, and Nodoka stepped forward anxiously, just as a giant metal plate slammed down in the doorway the with a tremendous crash.

"She's trapped," the Japanese woman said worriedly.

"Yes, but you didn't manage to take away all of her tools," a man with a British accent said as he stepped out of the bushes near the house. To be honest, he'd been a little worried when the Slayer had surveyed the area, as she'd seemed to focus on his little patch of cover a little too long, but was now both relieved and irritated.

Nodoka scowled. "If I'd had an idea where this was going to happen beforehand, or a plan from your people to follow, maybe that could have been different."

The man nodded reluctantly. Unfortunately, due to how late the higher-ups had learned of the girl's eighteenth birthday, the whole operation had been somewhat ad hoc, though the way the woman was glaring at him made him feel that she held him personally responsible for it.

"We will see how the girl does," he said, gesturing to a small white van nearby. Nodoka looked after him, confused, until he reached the vehicle and opened the rear door, revealing a set of surveillance monitors inside.

HR.

Ranko jumped about half a foot when the loud clang reverberated behind her, and spun to face the disturbance in a combat ready stance. What she saw made her curse, as there was a solid wall of steel there, having apparently descended from the second story on a set of tracks.

"Okay, if Sasuke's here with his traps, I'm killing someone," she vowed, bending to the bottom of the metallic wall, and trying to get purchase under it with the fingers of her left hand.

"I'm afraid it's stuck in an inset groove in the floor," a male voice came from behind her, and the redhead turned rapidly, nearly completely blindsided as a quick movement deprived her of her weapon, sending it flying down the hall and farther into the house.

Blinking, the martial artist withdrew backwards, startled at the reflexes of her unknown opponent, though when she finally got a look at him, she almost fell into the wall behind her. "Who the hell are you?" She asked bluntly, looking straight into the eyes of a rather old looking balding man with a pair of round glasses perched over his nose.

"Ah, hello Slayer, my name is LeStat, a pleasure to meet you," the man answered, bowing deeply to the girl.

"Uh, you Mom's old friend?" The martial artist hazarded, wondering if the door blocking trick was some sort of insane greeting. After all, Shampoo and Ryoga had stranger ones.

"Your mother's friend?" the man asked, tilting his head to the side. "Wow, they don't tell you girls anything, do they?"

"Uh..." Ranko tried, now completely confused.

"Well, this could actually be more pleasant than I thought," the man said. "I've got some food in the dining room, how would you like some?"

Ranko was still, at least nominally, inclined to think that some very odd things were going on here, and she was worried about her mother, who was out in the street at the moment. "I really should break outa here 'n get Mom," she objected. "This place is dangerous at night."

"Oh, don't worry about that," he assured her, "This place is so heavily protected against the undead that my skin itches constantly, and I'm already inside the circle."

"If you're sure," the redhead said uncertainly, as she was starting to smell the meal down the hall, and the Saotome stomach was a hard thing to deny.

LeStat nodded, noting the girl's eyes starting to glaze, and wondering if he had somehow caught that vampiric hypnotism trick off of Dracula without knowing it as he followed her into the dining room.

As the redhead looked over a table filled with noodles in broth, along with ravioli and some things that looked like Romaji letters, she blinked. "Huh?" She asked, looking at one of the plates and poking its contents quizzically.

"I had to make do with the canned goods," LeStat said. "I hope it will suffice."

"Yeah, it's fine," Ranko said, settling down at one end of the table and looking down at a cylindrical piece of potted meat dubiously before picking it up and taking a bite out of it.

"So," her host started, "you honestly don't know what's happening?" At the girl's shake of the head, he sighed. "No wonder all of those idiots could brag about this," he scowled. "Well, you deserve to know your fate, and given that you can't really stop it, I suppose I can tell you what your own people have done to you."

Ranko put down the chunk of meat she'd bitten into, grimacing and looking at the short man. He knew that her strength had been taken, and seemed to think he knew who did it. He also had something planned for her, which probably involved death or abject humiliation, but only part of her mind was focused on that detail as he spoke.

"You see, your Watcher's Council likes to perform a little experiment on its Slayers when they turn eighteen. They somehow take away your Slayer powers, and lock you in a room with a master vampire," he gestured at himself, "that would be me, to see which of us comes out the other side." He'd spoken this explanation all in the way one would mention that the weather was nice, or Ryoga had broken down a wall, which was kind of unnerving, despite his unassuming appearance.

"You're... a master vampire?" The Japanese girl asked, incredulously, before the earlier parts of his statement finally clicked. "And the Watchers... locked me in here?"

"Well it certainly wasn't me, was it?" LeStat demanded irritably. "I would have brought in some good wine and maybe classical music. If you're going to die, it may as well have been a good sendoff, I always say."

"I ain't gunna die," Ranko declared, pushing her now empty plate away, having eaten even quicker than normal to avoid the taste, "'n you're dumber than I thought if you think I'm gunna buy that Mom led me here deliberately."

The Vampire sighed. "Just because I'm a blood drinking abomination from hell doesn't mean I'm always lying, you know," he grumbled, gesturing up to one corner of the ceiling, where a grey box with some lights on it was hanging. "Look at the camera over there. That's how they see how 'resourceful' you are."

The redhead shook her head. That sounded like the dumbest test she could possibly think up, and the idea that her mother could be a part of any organization that sanctioned it seemed patently ridiculous. She stomped down mercilessly on the little part of her mind that reminded her of a certain pact.

Even so, she could see that the camera's light was on, and she didn't want whoever was on the other end seeing what was happening. Grabbing the napkin beside her, she tossed it into the air, where it sailed gently over to cover the lens.

On the other side of the table, LeStat clapped. "Good throw, fair lady," he said, noting the Japanese girl's eyebrow twitch at the words.

"Okay, so you're a master vampire come to kill me," Ranko observed. "I didn't notice any drugs in the food, so why're ya doing all this?"

"Well, it's the polite thing to do, isn't it? I mean, when I was turned, my sire just turned up, drained me of blood, fed me some of his and dumped me in a gutter in the middle of London. I mean, how's that for something to wake up to on a Friday morning in February?" He shook his head. "I always thought I may as well make things more comfortable for my victims."

Ranko just blinked. "Um, ya don't know Picolet Chardin, do ya?" she asked, dubiously. LeStat shook his head. and Ranko frowned. "Don't suppose I could get outta this without a fight? Like ya said, I ain't exactly feelin' up to it," she offered, making a mental note that her promise to let him leave if he left her alone had absolutely no hold on Buffy.

The short man shook his head, and took off his glasses. "I'm afraid I can't do that," he said. "I've been preparing for this chance for over a century. Do you know how often all the stars are right for the night of Saint Vigius? I may be a Master Vampire, but it's not precisely due to my overwhelming power." He snorted. "I even had to bribe a Watcher to say how strong I was before they came out and caught me!"

"You what?" Ranko asked, her eyes wide in disbelief.

"Yes, I know, but I had to," the Vampire started, apparently now falling into a rant. "Every fifty years or so I'd encounter some young upstart bragging about killing a Slayer. It's not that bloody hard, there's a new one every five years at most, but no, these bastards are so smug, 'Oi! Wilbur! You not bagged yerself a Slayer yet? I got two!' It's not my fault the Bloody Awful Poet was so damned lucky. Why isn't killing an entire village in one night enough for them? And..."

It was at about this point that LeStat, or rather, Wilbur, was gesticulating wildly with one hand to make a point, when Ranko reached rapidly for a hot tea kettle that was sitting in the middle of the table, dumping it over herself, yelping in pain, and rolling out of his chair towards the entrance of the room where his spear was all in one movement.

It took the vampire several seconds to realize that he was talking to thin air and track his guest's movement. When he finally caught sight of the 'Slayer' again, Ranma was standing, several inches taller than before. There were small rips in his pants' legs where he'd grown too large for them, and he had a somewhat pained look on his face.

"Well, that's a new one," Wilbur muttered, shocked. "Let me guess, you want to fight now?" He tried to keep his expression confident. After all, he was fighting a depowered Slayer with the power of Saint Vigius on his side, but the depowered Slayer had just done something he REALLY hadn't seen coming, and had a weapon. Wilbur, on the other hand, occasionally lost fights with his human victims.

Several minutes later, Wilbur was very sure that he was going to lose, as he stood across from his opponent, the dining table smashed, and a bowl of Jello mostly all over the clean suit he'd stolen from one of the upstairs bedrooms. He'd started thinking this about around the time the 'depowered' Slayer had effortlessly punched several holes through the solid oak of the table. Well, actually, it may have been ply-wood, but he was too nervous to really care at the moment.

"All right," he said, as Ranma looked like he was going to move again, "I'm going to lose this one, aren't I?"

"I really hope so," Ranma responded, a little surprised by dialogue like this taking place in the middle of a fight.

"I don't suppose you could make the end dramatic, could you?" the vampire asked hopefully. "You know, maybe pitch me off the roof or something?" Ranma slowly shook his head. "Could you at least make it quick and SAY it was a dramatic death?"

Ranma nodded at this, as the rather pathetic sight in front of him was making him feel just plain uncomfortable, before lashing out with his spear and taking the small vampire's head off. Oddly, and perhaps to Wilbur's appreciation, lightning flashed outside of the house at that very moment.

HR.

The screen was black. In fact, the screen had been black for at least ten minutes now, as Nodoka and Travers sat in the back of the van. "I don't think they're coming out any time soon," the man observed, as he squinted at the other cameras.

Nodoka, on the other hand, was wringing her hands and pacing behind him, at least as much as the small confines of the van would allow. "What have I done?" she muttered over and over, her eyes flickering desperately from one image to the other, until she finally saw something in one of them, near the door.

She didn't think, only pushing the back door of the van open and jumping out, running towards the house. As she was about half way there, she heard a bellow of "What the bloody hell?" from the van, and turned around in shock.

Her blood froze at what that exclamation could mean, until Travers stumbled out of the back door, his face purple with rage. "I knew there was something strange going on!" He bellowed. "Who is that boy in there? Did you arrange for this? Did you warn the girl?"

"What are you talking about?" Nodoka asked, torn between answering to her technical superior and seeing if Ranko was alright immediately. "I didn't warn Ranko of what was happening, I couldn't. I swore on my honor to obey the council, and I don't break my word lightly."

"So, the old guy was tellin the truth?" a male voice, rather similarly accented to Ranko's, asked from behind Nodoka. She spun to see a young, black haired man crawling through a small hole in the bricks that covered one of the house's windows, and looking at her in shock. As she met his eyes, she saw disbelief there, as well as betrayal.

"Who are you?" Travers demanded, "and where is Ms. Smith?"

"Just answer a question first," the boy said. "This whole thing, lockin someone in a house with a real old Vampire and locking away their strength, do you guys do that to all the Slayers?"

"How did you..." Travers sputtered, before Nodoka cut in.

"It's supposed to be a method of determining the Slayer's adaptability in a tough situation," she explained, looking down at her hands. "I disagreed with the idea of the practice, but was required to carry it out." She looked up at the strange boy, hope in her eyes. "Ranko, is she all right?"

The boy looked away, and started to walk off, not answering her question, and she stepped forward a few steps. "Is Ranko all right?" She called out again, "and who are you? Did you help her? What happened?" By this point, the worry in her voice was obvious, but the boy only turned for a moment.

He looked at her, then shook his head, and turned again just as the rain that had been threatening all night began to fall. Nodoka stared in shock as black hair turned red and height melted away, before the figure ran off.

END.

Retrospective Disclaimer: No Hellsing agents were permanently harmed in the making of this fanfic, though Alucard may want to kill us for it. He may also be laughing his fangs off. We aren't suicidal enough to find out.

We were going to call the potted meat something else, but we feared the guys in horned helmets would show up, and that would have just been silly.

Council screw-up chapter total: 4  
Council screw-up total: 9


	8. Chapter 8: Fallout

Chapter 8: Fallout.

Buffy Summers was, for one of the very few times in her average day, totally relaxed. This would seem odd if you knew what she was doing, namely wandering the streets in hopes that a fanged monstrosity would come leaping out at her, but it was true. Most of the time Giles, her mother, or even Willow was on her about something or other, and the idea that all she had to worry about was aiming a stake correctly for three or four hours was tremendously appealing.

As such, she was rather rudely surprised when, turning a corner, she saw a shadowed figure violently, forcefully, and above all else slowly beating a vampire into dust without the benefit of the pointy instrument of vampiric doom. She watched in a sort of sick fascination as an elbow drop caved in a skull, and then the attached hand grabbed a shoulder and twisted it with a wet and crackly snapping sound. Seconds later, the caved in skull finally registered on whatever magic determined how a vamp could die, and the thing puffed into dust.

"Um, bad day?" the Slayer tried, knowing that she really didn't have room to talk about cruelty to vampires, but still feeling that she had to say something. When the figure turned to her, she actually stepped back a little from the now clearly identifiable Ranko, her eyes red, and, just on the outer edge of the Slayer's senses, some form of multicolored sparkling aura moving around her body.

"You don't want to know," the redhead drawled, in a perfectly level voice.

"Okay, creepy monotone, that's pretty bad," Buffy agreed. "Should you be out torturing vamps? Your mom said you were feeling sick and wouldn't be around today..." She trailed off as she saw the other girl flinch at the mention of her parent.

"Don't call her that," the shorter girl hissed, the monotone gone now, before she turned and started to walk off.

"Okay," Buffy said, hurrying to walk beside the other girl. "Big fight with parents, it's natural to come out and kill demons. Heck, I used to do it all the time before mom and dad divorced," she said, not quite sarcastically.

"Did your mom ever inject you with muscle relaxants and toss you into a house with what was supposed to be an elder vampire?" Ranko asked, suddenly turning and glaring at the blonde.

"Um, there was the time with the insane asylum," Buffy said, before what Ranko had said and her response fully processed. "Wait, what?" she yelled, her voice echoing slightly in the empty street.

"Some sort of Council training for Slayers on their eighteenth birthdays," Ranko explained. "Which is funny, because I found out last night that I'm NOT a Slayer, and my ability to use my chi was the only thing that kept me from being eaten alive... well, that and my curse."

Buffy blinked, several times. "Okay," she said, trying to figure out what was going on. This, of course, was the trouble with Sunnydale. One moment you'd be out for a nice walk and some vamp dusting, and the next the new Slayer in town would be telling you about evil Watcher's Council rituals and have a look in her eye that Buffy didn't really want to think about.

"We should go some place to talk about this," she offered. "How about the li... closed, um, the Bronze... too many people... Come over to my place, Mom's been worrying about me having too few friends anyways, and..." Thinking of the redhead's statement, she continued, "I doubt you'll want to go home any time soon."

Ranko thought for several moments, and then nodded. At the moment, she felt about as lost as she had when she'd come up out of the pool at Jusenkyo, and all of the pure, mindless anger had been vented on the pile of dust, now half a block away, that had once been a vampire. This, of course, was a very good indicator that, at the time, Genma's running like a bat out of hell had been a very, very good decision.

Seeing the look on the Japanese redhead's face, Buffy tried to think of something to cheer her up as the two changed directions towards her house. "If Mom's up, we could get some pretty good snacks," she offered, knowing how much the other liked food.

Fortunately, given how Ranko was raised, Buffy's rather clumsy tactic bore results, the Saotome stomach at least temporarily overriding almost any other concerns, and she sped to a slow jog, something Buffy quickly followed suit in.

HR.

Nodoka staggered home, both tremendously confused and very worried. She'd just finished up with a forty-five minute long interrogation and inquiry session with Quentin Travers, after she'd WANTED to charge after Ranko for information. By now, the younger girl was long gone.

Letting out a long, drawn out breath, the 'Smith' matriarch sat down in a large chair in her home's living room and picked up a phone. What she'd seen earlier greatly disturbed her. Ranko, or whatever that thing was, had changed forms right in front of her eyes, with such fluidity that the magic to do so would have to be deeply imbedded into its being.

She wasn't sure what this meant, as she was relatively sure it was the same Ranko she'd been traveling with the entire time, and the girl had been passed over with so many evil detecting spells that she would have to be some form of true demon to fool them all, and an extremely lucky one at that.

The fact that she hadn't corrupted or killed anyone in over three months made the woman doubt that, which meant it had to be something she didn't know about. Carefully, she removed a slip of paper from an address book next to the phone and started punching in numbers.

The exorbitant cost reported per minute caused the woman to wince. Given that the Council was likely to fire her, and maybe do worse, within a day or two, she was likely going to need a job very soon, but as the phone was picked up after the second ring, she sighed in relief. "Hello?" She asked, into the receiver.

""Hello, Tendo residence," Kasumi Tendo's cheerful tones came from the other end, in perfect, accentless English.

"Can I talk to Nabiki please?" Nodoka asked, and Kasumi gasped.

"Auntie Nodoka?" She asked, finally recognizing the voice. "How are you and Ran...ko?"

Nodoka's eyebrow rose at the obvious slip over the young girl's name, but she continued regardless. "That is hard to explain, Kasumi-chan, but can I speak to your sister please? It's important."

The line went silent for a moment, and Nodoka heard several odd noises, including a duck's quack and something being kicked over before Nabiki picked up and got straight to the point. "You do realize that calling us indicates a breach of your contract, right?" She asked, somewhat worriedly.

"That isn't important right now, Nabiki," Nodoka said, somewhat more sharply than she normally would. "I need to ask you something important."

"Did something happen?" The middle Tendo asked, a little more worried sounding now, and a distinctly victorious sounding quack was heard from behind her, followed by what sounded like an animal growling.

"I'm not sure," the auburn haired woman admitted. "Ranko... she, he," she sputtered for a moment, unsure how to describe what had happened.

"Oh my," Nabiki observed. "So, the cat's out of the bag, huh?"

"You knew about this?" Nodoka asked, shocked.

"Auntie Saotome, Ranko's been living at our house for years. Something that large is kind of hard to hide for that long," the brown haired girl drawled.

"Why didn't any of you tell me?" Nodoka demanded, now somewhat irritated.

A long sigh came from the other end of the line. "Okay, since you're calling me, I'm pretty sure Ranko didn't explain anything, so she's probably not there," Nabiki observed.

"No, she ran away after..." Nodoka trailed off, stopping herself from mentioning what had happened that night.

"Strange," the younger girl muttered. "I always figured if he was caught, he'd face it."

"What?" Nodoka snapped, and Nabiki winced, though the older woman obviously couldn't see it.

"Nothing, it's just that someone's apparently grown some common sense," the middle Tendo muttered. "Look, Ranko's curse is something I've kept secret from some people for very good reasons. You're going to have to give me a better reason to tell you."

"I've already paid you," Nodoka started, before she was interrupted.

"Look, Saotome-san, some things I don't sell for money," the middle Tendo snapped. "Then again, if he's not dumb enough to throw himself on the sword, I may as well say it." And she did. As Nodoka listened in a state of quickly growing fascinated horror, Nabiki began to tell the story of Genma, Ranma and Jusenkyo, along with where Ranko and Mr. Panda came from.

When the girl was done, with several incredulous interruptions by the older woman, Nodoka slumped back against her chair, her face distinctly pale. For a moment, she tried to rationalize things away. The story was generally fantastically unlikely. A curse of the sort described should have shown up on some magical test or other, but then the Slayer ritual they'd tried had been hurriedly thrown together, and afterward it could have slipped under the radar as part of the spirit's magic.

It was all starting to make a sick sort of sense now, how Ranko would always do almost anything she asked, the strange sort of longing and guilty look in the girl's eyes whenever she met them, and the look of absolute betrayal that she'd seen earlier.

"Auntie? Auntie, are you all right?" Nabiki's voice came from the other end of the line, actually sounding concerned.

Nodoka started, very softly at first, and then more loudly, to laugh. It wasn't a pleasant laugh. It contained hitches, and catches, a 'broken' laugh if ever Nabiki had heard one, and she had, what with living near the Kunos for years. "Okay, I'm going to assume something pretty bad happened over there," she observed quietly, really not looking forward to giving this report to her sister, who was always hungry for news of Ranma.

"I made my son the Slayer," Nodoka choked out, between laughs. "I put my son through the Cruciamentum!"

"Cruciamentum?" Nabiki asked, before Kasumi's voice could be heard in the background, and she exclaimed, "Torture?"

The older woman winced, especially as she heard a loud growl from what sounded remarkably like a Panda. "I have to go," she said, quickly.

"Wait, I..." Nabiki started, before the phone went dead, and she turned to see the rest of the Tendo household, plus Shampoo, Mousse, Ryoga and Ukyo, who had all been over to 'talk' to Akane about Ranma's disappearance or protect her, depending on which one, and who were now giving her expectant looks.

"Mercenary girl tell Shampoo where Airen mother is, yes? Or Shampoo make Mercenary girl unable to count." The Amazon said, with a deadly look in her eyes.

Nabiki threw up her hands. From what she'd heard, Ranma was already up to his neck in something, probably something big. "All I know is that she was speaking American English," she offered helplessly.

"The number had a California area code," Kasumi offered, with a serene smile, and held up an old and extremely dogeared phone book. "Somewhere near Los Angeles."

"Sis, you really need to get out more," Nabiki drawled, worriedly.

"Shampoo no like sound of torture," The purple haired girl said. "Must save Airen."

"For once I agree with the bimbo," Ukyo agreed, hefting her giant spatula, and walking for the door beside Shampoo. Mousse followed the two out, proclaiming how much better things were without Saotome, right up until a giant spatula knocked him silly.

"Kasumi, what'd I say about this place being more peaceful without Saotome?" Nabiki asked, sighing as she noted the destroyed living room.

Kasumi just smiled softly as she turned the table back upright.

HR.

Ranma sat in the bathtub, staring up at the ceiling and thinking. Buffy had offered Ranko the use of her bathroom to clean up when they had gotten to her home, and the at the time girl had accepted. Ranma always enjoyed the time he could spend submerged in hot water, not only due to the fact that the curse couldn't possibly trigger, but because it was generally relaxing, a luxury that he'd very rarely had during his ten years on the road, and at the moment he needed all of the relaxation he could get.

As he reflected on the night that had passed, he had to admit that things weren't quite as bad as he'd originally thought, though they weren't exactly a bed of roses. He'd discovered that an organization that his mother was a part of indulged in horrific rituals that likely resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent girls, which... well, actually, that was just as bad as it had originally seemed, even if his mother had seemed repentant about it.

He'd always known, or at least believed, that she would go through with the Seppuku pledge if it was needed, but hadn't really equated his death by that pledge to a more wide ranging lack of respect for life.

It had seemed a clear cut deal, just like all the others that he was a part of. His life for his manhood, just like his life for his marriage, or his life for a pile of rice cakes and a ten thousand yen note. Hell, it was a lot better than his life for an unbeatable technique, some sanity loss, and a pile of dead furry things, but this didn't just involve his life, it involved those of innocent, non-martial artists, those whom even his father would have, and had, risked his life to protect.

For a moment, he let himself think that his lying to his mother about the curse had contributed to this, until something occurred to him, and he felt cold even in the heated water. If it hadn't been him who had been chosen, it was very likely that it would have been one of the others. Akane would have actually been somewhat better off, given that most of her strength came from rage fueled Chi, but he shuddered to think of what would have happened to Ukyo, or even Shampoo, if stripped of their weapons and locked in a room with an angry vampire.

The pigtailed martial artist sighed, and began climbing out of the tub. He didn't know why, but what had happened tonight felt like as large a betrayal as the Neko-ken, and what was worse, he couldn't even think of a reason for it, save the rather weak one of honor and tradition that his mother had given. Over the last few years, he had really started to hate those words.

Stepping completely onto the only slightly damp bathroom floor, the martial artist was reaching for the cold water nob, deciding that it would be far better to explain what was going on to Buffy as Ranko than as Ranma, when the bathroom door slid open and an older woman walked in holding a set of freshly washed towels.

The two stared at each other for a moment, before Joyce Summers turned her head to the side. "Buffy, there's a nude man in our bathroom!" She called. "Is there something you should be telling me?"

Ranma's eyes flicked around the room desperately, before he noted the pile of towels, lashing out quickly and grabbing one of them to wrap around himself. "Um, I can explain," he started, as Buffy came up behind her mother.

"Angel, how many times have I got to tell you, my window's on the front of the..." Buffy started, before trailing off as she caught a glimpse of the boy she'd beaten the living hell out of a month before. Given that she still felt guilty about that incident and had wanted to apologize for it, she remembered his face.

This was also the same reason why she didn't immediately draw a stake and start making threatening motions with it. "Okay, what are you doing here?" She demanded.

"Um, look, it's a long story, and it has to do with the, um, Rabbits," Ranma said, his eyes flicking meaningfully towards Joyce.

"The rabbits?" Buffy asked, and then it clicked. "Oh! Oh, the Rabbits! Um, yeah, Mom, this is..." She fumbled for an excuse that would work. "This is erm, he's, um, Ranko's brother. He's um, really shy, so he didn't want to meet you downstairs, and..."

Joyce just slowly shook her head.

"You aren't buying this, are you?" Buffy asked, looking down.

"Get dressed, young man, and all three of us will talk in the living room," the older woman proclaimed, before turning, grabbing her daughter's arm and pulling her out of the room. "Also, what's this about Angel and your bedroom window?"

Buffy laughed nervously.

HR.

Five minutes later, Buffy and Joyce Summers were sitting uncomfortably in their living room, the latter giving the former dubious looks. "And why, exactly, would your eighteenth century history tutor have to climb through the window into your room?" she asked, going over the explanation that Buffy had given for her comment about Angel.

The Slayer sighed, wondering why all of her lies tonight had been so pathetic. Then again, she was pretty tired, though if she didn't think of something quick she would have to tell her mother about... the Rabbits or be grounded for all eternity.

She was already stressed about what Ranko had told her before they had come back here, and she couldn't find the redhead anywhere. She was sort of hoping that she'd gone out to brutalize more vampires or something, but she knew that she probably wasn't that lucky. On top of that, there was now a random guy who she'd beaten the crap out of in her bathroom. At the moment, she really wished she was just on patrol.

As she and her mother had a bit of a staring contest, the younger desperately trying to think of what to tell the older, a third party cleared their throat softly, and the two turned to see Ranko standing at the bottom of the stairs from the upper level, wearing the pair of beaten up blue jeans and black shirt that Buffy had lent her.

"Oh, Ranko, where's your brother?" Joyce asked, giving Buffy a sidelong look.

The short redhead sighed, before walking over and sitting on the couch where Buffy was lounging, trying to look relaxed. "I don't have a brother," she started, and Joyce looked meaningfully at Buffy. "I have a curse. It makes me change genders when I'm hit with water. You saw my male form upstairs. Yeah, Buffy, I was going to tell you, but I kinda wanted to do it a bit more gently."

Joyce gaped.

Buffy gaped.

There was, in general, a lot of gaping going around, and Ranko was expecting her mother to show up and gape along with the other two when Buffy finally spoke up. "You know, that does sort of explain why you hate shopping so much."

Ranko twitched.

"You're taking this well," Joyce observed, giving both her daughter and the Japanese girl dubious looks, wondering precisely how Ranko expected her to believe the story.

"So, that was you I beat up in the Bronze," Buffy said, momentarily forgetting her audience, as Ranko nodded. "I knew you were torturing me in our training sessions for a reason," the blonde girl grumbled.

"Yes, because it was training," Ranko said, as though she'd gone over this point already. "If I had a grudge against everyone who tried to kill me, I'd only be able to talk to about ten people I know."

"Oh," the Slayer said, before being interrupted by her mother.

"You beat someone up in the Bronze? And what were you training in the martial arts for?" Joyce demanded

"Um... martial arts club?" Buffy tried, hopefully.

"Right," Joyce said, standing from her chair and beginning to pace across the length of the living room. "Drama club, science club, swimming team, cheerleading, and now a martial arts club? Buffy, if you were really doing all of that you wouldn't have enough time in the day to tie your shoes in the morning, now tell me the truth."

"Um," Ranko said, shooting a glance to Buffy and beginning to slowly edge her way out of the room, noting that the conversation was off of her, and she would really like to get some sleep in the guest room.

The Summers girl gave her supposed ally a panicked, 'help me,' look, but the martial artist just shrugged helplessly back.

"Well, Buffy? I'm waiting," Joyce demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and giving her daughter a level look. Buffy opened and closed her mouth several times, saying nothing, and as Joyce noticed that her daughter was being singularly inarticulate, she turned her glare on the martial artist who was still sidling towards the stairs. "You're staying here as well. I don't know what you were doing wandering around this late, and you looked like a mess when you arrived. Do you know what she was doing?"

HR.

"I can't believe this," Buffy grumbled, as she slumped down on her bed, Ranma sitting on the chair at her computer desk, in male form and wearing a set of her father's old clothes that looked ridiculously loose on him. "Even I can lie better than that. Hell, WILLOW can lie better than that!"

He shook his head. "Well, what was I supposed to do? Besides, I never got the whole secrecy thing. I mean, if a city's full of evil, blood sucking vampires it makes sense ta tell people about it so they can be protected."

"Yes, and the hot chocolate had nothing to do with it," Buffy accused, causing Ranma to shrug.

"Well, it did activate the curse... sorry about your stuff, by the way," he answered. "So, um, how long 'till your mom wakes up?"

"I don't know, we just shattered her worldview into little pieces with a sledge hammer. How long do you think that takes to recover from," the Summers girl said, sarcastically sweetly.

"Well, if Mr. Tendo's anything to go by, it takes about thirty minutes," Ranma said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, I suppose you're more familiar with destroying people's idea of reality than I am," Buffy muttered sourly. "You know, that actually being a guy thing is seriously creepy."

"Yeah, well..." Ranma said, trailing off and looking out the bedroom window. "Sorry, I had a good reason to keep it hidden."

"Yeah, you were trying not to die, and we both know how that turned out," Buffy quipped, remembering what she'd been told about the strange council ritual, and immediately regretting her words as she saw the other's facial expression clouding up.

Letting out a long sigh, she decided, "Look, it's after midnight, and Mom's probably out until tomorrow. Let's get some sleep, and then I've got to talk to Giles about... stuff."

Ranma nodded, standing to leave her room for the guest room at the end of the hall. Turning at the door, he said "Thanks for not tryin ta cave my head in with a table."

"Um, you're welcome?" The Slayer replied, blinking in total confusion as her temporary house guest left.

HR.

"Are you sure about this?" Giles asked, as he sat across from Travers, looking at a video screen.

"Yes, apparently Mrs. Saotome managed to muck up the detection spells, and we were operating under the assumption that a demon was a Slayer," the other man said in an obvious state of adjutation.

"I'm sorry, who?" Giles asked, blinking and rubbing at his glasses.

"She's been using the name Smith, that Ranko girl's watcher," Travers said impatiently. "The thing managed to get away before I could put a tracking spell on it, and now it's hiding somewhere in the city. I should have known that someone with that level of reported strength couldn't be human."

"I, erm, don't think, I mean. I've worked around Ranko for weeks. She's rather impolite and boisterous, but I'd hardly think she's a demon," the more field-experienced Brit objected.

"I know what I saw, and that was a perfect mass shifting, with no external manifestation. It's some sort of changeling."

"But, aren't changelings children who are replaced with," Giles started, but was waved to silence.

"Saotome's now under investigation as well. She was the one who did the major preparations for the new Slayer ritual, and for all we know she may have reworked it into some form of possession rite," the man growled.

"But isn't that the whole p..." Giles started, and was waved off again. "Why the bloody hell are you talking to me if you don't want my opinion?" he muttered, quietly, fortunately too much so for the other to hear.

"I'm going back to headquarters. Update me if the girl shows herself again," Travers ordered, ejecting the tape of the parts of the Cruciamentum that had been captured from the VCR on the library's little A.V. cart, and heading for the door.

"I'll be sure to do that," Giles lied, raising one hand in a very special way when the other's back was turned. "Bloody wanker."

When the doors closed, the librarian sighed, walking into his little office to see a merrily piping tea kettle. he sighed in relief, pouring a cup of the stuff before grabbing a very special book off of the shelf and pouring himself a dollop of its contents. He was relatively sure that Ranko wasn't a demon, and from what he'd seen of Nodoka, she could be accused of being too bound by honor at times, but definitely not traitorous.

Even worse, the Council's cleanup squads were the sort of things he wanted at least three state lines away from Buffy at all times, as he could just imagine how she would react to some of the darker sides of what the Council did. "This," he decided, as he waited for the tea to cool to the point it wouldn't horribly scald his mouth, "is going to be a long night."

END.

Hello, faithful readers, and we hope you've enjoyed this chapter. Just wanted to say we've noticed a bit of a trend in reviews of... well, pretty much the entire story, involving Ranma's power level. We understand your concern, but given we've kept right on going for five chapters, do you really have to mention the same concern every chapter or two? We heard you the first time, thank you.

We've got a long term plot, the current weakness of Ranma is part of that plot, and yes, it will get better. Now please, stop talking about it. We're sure that there are plenty of other things that can be mentioned, both good and bad about this fic, but we've been denied any other type of constructive critique by half of you due to this one issue.

Putting a fully powered Ranma in Season 2 Buffy is like dropping a fully powered Goku into Nerima. All tension from fight scenes is officially gone, and while we seem to thrive on anti-climaxes in this story, there are at least two important battles that we actually wanted to have, y'know, a little grey area of injury or death or whatnot.

Anyhow, shutting up.

Council Screwups.

Total for chapter: 3.

Total for Story: 12.


	9. Chapter 9: Fallout 2

Author's Note: New Chapter. Not sure how good it is, since Weebee's suffering from writer's block and his computer blew up. Here's hoping Jonakhensu can carry the whole thing, and if it sucks, um, blame him!

Fun note: This Fic's review count on Twisting The Hellmouth was exactly 42 when this chapter was posted... if the question was "How many reviews will a Ranma/Buffy Crossover by Weebee and Jonakhensu get on a single web site in eight chapters," then this universe is truely a very, very strange place.

Chapter 9: Fallout 2.

In a large, well-lit room, Spike lay on an overly frilly bed, surrounded by the glassy eyed stares of more than a dozen dolls. As he cracked open his eyes and let out a groan, he was looking at one with blonde hair. Turning his face away from it, the side of his head throbbed, and he damned whoever had made him drink so much the night before. Stopping his thought process for a moment, he blinked. He was a vampire, and therefor would likely need half a brewery to get a hangover this bad. "Musta been one hell of a party," he muttered, and heard the sound of footsteps from close by.

"Oh Spike, you're finally awake," Drucilla's rather dreamy voice floated to his ears. "After what that Slayer did to you, I thought I would have to go and talk to her."

"Right, the Slayer," the bleached-blond agreed, forcing himself up to a sitting position and wincing. Her and her damned mother had put an end to one of the most successful raids he'd participated in during the past ten years, and apparently done so by smacking him in the side of the head with a Katana. "Just my luck, felled by someone using a probably magicked deadly instrument as a golf club," he muttered.

"What was that?" Drucilla asked, curiously, tilting her head.

"Wasn't anything, love," Spike said quickly, looking around. "So, how long was I out?"

Drucilla moved a hand to her chin, adopting a traditional thinking pose. "I think," she started uncertainly, "It may have been a month."

"It can't have been a month," Spike said irritably, "The anointed brat's goon squad would have tried to dust me by now, and your bird ain't decomposin yet."

The black haired vampire frowned, walking to a cage in the corner of the room. "Oh, don't worry about them, we have a friend who helped us with them when they tried to hurt me." She then opened the cage, extracting a rather limp looking budgy. "And birdy isn't dead, is it?"

"Dru, Honey, you keep forgetting to feed it, of course it's dead," Spike grumbled, rubbing at his head and thinking that it was far too early for him to deal with his love's odd sense of reality.

"But it wouldn't eat the blood," she mumbled, staring down at the bird before putting it back in its cage.

Spike just sighed, walking to the door to his and Dru's room and pushing it open to reveal the inside of the anointed one's warehouse. Sure enough, all of the other vampires were gone, though there appeared to be someone in the middle of the floor, set up on a small mat and sleeping happily. "All right, who's this then?" The male vampire asked, hooking a finger at the strange figure.

"Oh, he's the one who helped defend me from the others," Dru explained.

Spike looked at the boy in the middle of the room, before walking over, crouching down and studying him more closely. "Oh great, not another guy as strong as a Slayer," he grumbled.

"Of course not, he's a vampire," The dark haired girl objected.

"Dru, he's breathing," Spike noted, before reaching a hand out to rest it on the other's neck. "And I can feel a pulse."

"Oh, I'm sure he's just pretending," Drucilla countered, but Spike rolled his eyes. He had been asleep for at least some time, and the damage the sword had done to him had needed energy to heal.

"Well, can't complain about delivery," he muttered, bending down and revealing his fangs. He tried to bite into the sleeping boy's neck, but was surprised when he felt an unusual amount of resistance. Confused, he increased pressure until he was pretty sure he would be biting through anything short of concrete or steel, but the boy kept right on sleeping. "Wash da bloofty 'Ell?" He asked, his mouth still half full of neck.

The person on the ground groaned and began to move, causing Spike's fangs to try and tear themselves out of his mouth before he let up pressure, standing back and looking more than mildly troubled. Looking at where he'd bitten, he saw two small red marks that were already going away.

As he watched, his target yawned, rolled towards him and Dru, and revealed two very noticeable fangs, though without the rest of the characteristics that made the face of an undisguised vampire. "Morning Drucilla-san," the boy said, in Japanese, before looking at Spike, confused. "Who's this guy?"

"Th Nam'th..." Spike started, before frowning and forming his human face again, rather relieved that the damage to his jaw receded with his fangs, "Name's Spike."

"Oh, Drucilla-san's friend, you're okay, huh?" The boy asked, smiling at him.

"For a definition of Okay," Spike noted, looking at the newcomer oddly. "Dru says you helped her against the annoying one 'n his goons, so thanks for that."

"No problem," the boy said, scratching the back of his head. "When I showed up, they were going to stab her with a stick or something, so..." he shrugged.

"They were gunna STAKE her?" Spike growled, suddenly serious. "I'll hang 'em all out in the sun for that!"

"Too late," Dru said, quietly. "P-Chan already put them outside after he knocked them out."

The boy, now identified as P-Chan's eyebrow twitched. "Please don't call me that," he grumbled, irritably.

Spike looked up to the high windows, where he saw bright sunlight streaming in, and reflecting against the wall on the other side. "East or west exit?" He asked, growing a vindictive grin.

"Um, north?" Ryoga asked, confused.

"He means east," Drucilla provided.

Spike's grin got even wider, and he walked up, slapping P-Chan on the back. "Y'know kid, I think I like you," he said, before starting to laugh.

The fanged boy, for his part, just looked confused.

HR.

Joyce Summers grumbled to herself as she stomped downstairs, her current mood being something half way between lethargic and living dead. She, as her daughter knew and took precautions against, was not a morning person. In addition, she had had one of the strangest dreams she'd ever been exposed to the night before, in which her daughter had come out... about being a slayer of evil demons. She shook her head, wondering precisely what psychologists would say about that, as she turned the corner into the kitchen and a cup of coffee was thrust into her hands.

"Thanks Buffy," she noted, taking a sip and walking over to the kitchen table, dropping there to enjoy her coffee, looking over a set of paperwork that she'd been checking the night before when she'd been distracted by something.

"Hey, you got any rice?" A voice intruded on her reading of a set of price lists, and she responded off-handedly.

"Top shelf of the cupboard near the fridge," she said, taking another sip of her coffee and wondering if her buyers were on something for wanting to get the piece in question for less than a thousand dollars. As she began correcting the forms, listening with half an ear to the clattering of something being cooked, she sort of wondered why Buffy had volunteered to do so this morning. It was entirely possible that she knew she'd had a hard day at work yesterday, but Joyce doubted it, as she and her daughter seemed to be remarkably out of touch with each other half the time.

"Hi Mom," Buffy said, walking past her.

"Hi Buffy," Joyce returned, looking up to note her daughter slipping into the seat across from her, where there was a glass of juice poured. She was about to go back to her work, when she realized that something was wrong. The cooking noises were still going on, yet she could see her daughter sitting right in front of her. Turning her head, she noticed a red haired Japanese girl working at the stove, her hands moving unusually quickly to keep a pot of rice as well as one of various vegetables going and not burning.

The middle-aged woman rubbed her eyes for a moment, before turning to Buffy. "You... don't actually hunt vampires, do you?" She asked, hopefully.

"Um, no?" Buffy offered.

"Damn it, I hate the fact that you can't lie to me," Joyce groaned, looking down into her coffee and wondering if it would swallow her up.

"Well, now you know how I feel," Buffy said with a slight smirk, trying to lighten the mood.

Joyce nodded slightly, running through what she remembered of the night before, and wincing at some of the corny questions she'd asked. "Have you tried not being a slayer," she muttered, self-deprecatingly. "What was I thinking?"

"Watched too many lifetime movies?" Buffy suggested.

Joyce grimaced. "Probably," she muttered, "But we are going to talk about this, and..." The older woman was interrupted as a plate of rice and vegetables was placed in front of her.

"Food's done," Ranma said, casually, getting an intensely grateful look from Buffy.

"You're her accomplice, aren't you?" Joyce asked, before taking a fork and picking up some of the vegetables.

"Well, we take shifts killing vampires," Ranma admitted, sitting at a third spot in the table, her own food in front of her.

"So, um, Ran...ma," Buffy said, remembering the name she'd been given last night. "You look a lot better."

The redhead nodded. "Can get over a lot with time to sleep on it," she admitted. "Still not sure what I'm gunna do, but don't feel like I wanna kill things anymore."

"Well, lack of homicidal urges is definitely a good thing," the blonde Slayer quipped, and then looked the other girl over, confused, noting that she was still wearing Buffy's father's old clothes, tied off to the point that they still fit. "So, um, why are you a girl again?" She asked, kind of surprised that she would be asking such a strange question. "I mean, with your mom and the whole hiding thing..." She trailed off.

Ranma shrugged. "Always found it easier ta be a girl when I'm cooking and it ain't over a camp fire." At the others' strange looks, she continued, "Pops usually didn't call me girly 'bout it if I was a girl and had Kasumi around."

Joyce frowned, taking her last sip of Coffee. "I would really like to meet your parents," she decided.

Ranma waved one hand. "Nah, Pop's okay, he's just an idiot."

Buffy snorted, choking on some of her rice, before managing to get it down correctly. "That's a new one," she quipped.

Joyce just shook her head, before standing, her clean plate in her hand, and taking it over to the sink. Ranma had cleaned hers seconds earlier, and had managed to resist starting on the others through force of will and much practice with Nodoka.

Buffy, noticing this, polished her food off as well and started heading for the door. "I have to go talk to Giles," she said, quickly, hoping that her mother wouldn't remember what she'd been about to ask before the meal began.

"Hey, you aren't going out there, I want to talk to you before you start... killing vampires, or something!" Joyce objected indignantly.

"Um, Mrs. Summers? Vampires don't come out during the day," Ranma offered. "Sunlight destroys 'em."

"Oh," Said woman muttered, looking confused.

"Look, this thing with Giles's important, and I'll be back when I'm done," Buffy promised.

"You'd better be," Joyce muttered.

"Don't worry, I'll drag her back if she doesn't come back on her own," Ranma promised. "I'm an okay tracker.

"If it weren't for the fact that the situation's totally different, I'd make the same threat about your mom," Buffy muttered. "As it is, to quote Xander, 'Curse my inability to be threatening!'"

All three laughed, before the blonde used the distraction to slip through the door, shutting it behind her.

HR.

Buffy knocked on the door to Giles' flat, doing her best not to knock it down while contemplating if that wasn't such a bad idea. At this point, she wanted answers rather badly, and he, apparently, had chosen this weekend to abandon his almost neurotically responsible ways and sleep in. "Giles!" The Slayer yelled, irritably. "Giles, wake up!"

"Would you shut up?" An angry female voice yelled from the next house over, and Buffy winced, before forgetting about it as Giles' door opened, and Jenny Calendar's face appeared. "Buffy?" the older woman asked, surprised.

"You know, if I didn't have more important things to worry about, I would so be teasing you about this," the blonde commented. "Where's Giles?"

"He's asleep," Jenny explained. "I showed up to see if he wanted to do any more cooking this morning and found him throwing up into the toilet."

"Oh," the Summers girl said, some of the indignation leaving her. "He's sick?"

"Actually," Jenny said, kind of surprised that she was saying it herself, "I'm pretty sure he got drunk last night, if you can believe it."

Buffy stopped to process this for several moments, before frowning darkly. "I see," she growled, pushing the door further open. "Giles, wake up, I need to talk to you!" She called into the house, provoking a wince from the computer teacher. When her call caused a groan to emerge from the bedroom, the Slayer pushed past Jenny, walking into the small, almost eerily tidy apartment.

"Buffy, what in the world's wrong with you, that's cruel and unusual," Jenny objected, laying a hand on the younger girl's shoulder, but not seeming to have any effect as Buffy stomped into the bedroom, putting her hands on her hips and looking down at her Watcher, who was looking rather pathetic, a cold compress over his forehead, as he curled up in the sheets.

"No, this is cruel and unusual," the Slayer growled, before leaning down to the Brit's ear and yelling "Slayers! Eighteen! Date rape drug! Make with the explainy!"

"What?" Jenny stumbled back, shocked at Buffy's outburst, as Giles winced at every word past the first, apparently for reasons completely unrelated to his hangover. Realizing that his furious charge wasn't going to be going away any time soon, Giles sat up, the compress falling down to land in his lap, and one hand coming up to shade his eyes. He considered asking if he could get a cup of tea first, still caught somewhat in that state of fuzzy confusion when you first wake up from a binge and realize that you have no idea where the policeman's hat you're wearing came from. "How do you know about the Cruciamentum?"

"What's this about date rape drugs?" The female teacher demanded, now back at the door and wondering if she should still be trying to calm Buffy down, or going to get a baseball bat. Seeing that the Slayer wasn't inclined to explain, and that Giles still hadn't completely recovered, she decided on the former, for the moment, and rested a hand on Buffy's shoulder. This time it got a reaction, as the other turned to her, irritated.

"What?" The younger woman demanded.

"You're not going to get any answers out of him like this, so come out into the living room and give him a chance to wake up, then you can tell me what's going on, and I can decide if you torturing a hungover man was justified or not," Jenny explained, in a rather reasonable tone.

"But what if he tries to escape?" Buffy asked, somewhat petulantly.

"His windows have bars. He'd have to be thinner and more flexible than you to get out of this room without using the door," Jenny explained in a perfect deadpan.

"I'm sitting right here, you know," Giles said, still slightly too tired to keep his thoughts to himself, but was silenced as Buffy glared at him.

HR.

"So, um," Joyce Summers said, as she sat at the kitchen table, watching as Ranma, now male, worked to wash the dishes at the sink. "You... kill vampires." The boy nodded. "Along with my daughter," she continued, getting another nod. The middle-aged woman let off a long sigh, leaning back in the wooden kitchen chair as far as it would go without tipping. "Why couldn't this be some overworking induced hallucination?" She groaned, dispiritedly.

Ranma spoke for the first time since Buffy had left at this. "Because you pissed off some demon somewhere?" he offered. "It's how I explain it to myself."

"I didn't even believe in demons until last night," Joyce groused. "I still don't, really, but that change of yours is pretty convincing, and if magic, then demons, I suppose."

Ranma snorted. "You live in a town with the biggest collection of vampires, demons, zombies and cats I've ever seen, and you somehow didn't notice for over a year?"

'Cats?' Joyce thought, wondering what they had to do with anything, but shaking her head. "It's just supposed to be impossible," she confessed. "Vampires? And Buffy's fighting them? It's like some bad horror movie."

Ranma shrugged, as he put the last of the dishes up on a rack. "Not really, they usually make more sense," he explained. "Real ghosts and stuff aren't nearly as focused or easy to understand."

The woman nodded, not really sure she understood quite what the martial artist meant, but knowing she probably should, for her daughter's sake if nothing else, and possibly to see how long to ground her. "Can you tell me what you know about this sort of thing?"

Ranma thought for a moment and then nodded, putting the rag he had been working with to one side and walking over to the kitchen table.

HR.

Rupert Giles, as a rule, was used to being glared at. It had happened quite often when he was younger, and still did from time to time, when he asked Buffy to do something she considered 'unfair,' or when he inferred to principal Snyder that students were something other than lower lifeforms fit only to be squashed like particularly troublesome insects, however he wasn't used to those glares being seemingly so full of disappointment, rather than pure anger. Of course, he could be a little biased, as both his Slayer and a woman he wanted to date were giving him the evil eye, and the residual effects of his hangover were still pounding at the back of his head.

When he found the man who had recommended 'a little liquid comfort' after a shocking or stressful event, he was going to have to do something... unpleasant to him. "Buffy," he started, deciding that he should try and salvage this situation. "Nodoka, and I, have very little choice in this sort of situation."

"Oh, so you did it because you have to," the Slayer said, bitterly. "So, if the Council asked you to torture me and the others for a week or something, you'd do it?"

Giles' expression was unreadable. "If it meant keeping you alive? Yes, I probably would," he said, causing Buffy's eyes to widen. "Though, I assure you, I would use the least mentally scarring and disfiguring means at my disposal."

"What?" Jenny asked, deadpan, wondering precisely who she'd been dating.

"Look," the watcher started, staring directly into Buffy's eyes. "Against Vampires, you're more powerful than any conventional force, but how would you fare against a long range precision rifle?" Not letting his Slayer respond, he continued. "I didn't want to tell you some of the things that go on, because I didn't think you were ready to know about them, and I was hoping to never have a reason."

""Well, it's too late now," Buffy snapped, before standing and turning to the door.

Before she could stalk out, Giles called "Buffy, stop!" For just a moment, reflexes trained into her from a year of training under the Watcher kicked in, and the blonde did so, not turning around. "The Council has declared that Ranko is a demon... They're dispatching a cleanup crew."

The Slayer's eyes widened, and she turned back to Giles for a moment. "Thanks," she said, nodding to him. "See? A little truth goes a long way." Turning again, she opened the front door and left the small flat, leaving a crestfallen Giles and a very confused Jenny behind.

END.


	10. Chapter 10: Fallout Tactics

Chapter 10: Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel.

Giles winced repeatedly as he heard yet another person hammering on his apartment door. Accepting a cup of tea from a still somewhat shaky Jenny Calendar, he asked, "Could you get that?"

"I'll tell them to go away," she responded, turning and walking to the door before peering through the glass that made up half of its top and sighing. "Erm, or not," she continued.

"What is it?" the brown haired librarian asked, trying to push his pounding headache out of his head with his index and ring fingers.

"It's Nodoka. She looks about as bad as you do," the computer teacher replied. "She's been crying pretty hard."

Giles let out a piteous groan. "Let her in," he decided, taking a deep, bracing gulp of his tea. This turned out to be very necessary, as Jenny had been quite correct, and the older woman looked positively dreadful as she entered the apartment and slumped down into a chair across from him. At least, he thought, she hadn't started her visit with loud, demanding screams as Buffy had. "What's happened?" he finally decided to ask, as it was obvious that she wasn't willing to say the first words.

She told him. He swore.

HR.

"You just take some sort of sick pride in breaking my parents, don't you?" Buffy said, her tone of voice somewhere between irritation and flat out confusion as she held her mother in her arms, the older woman babbling something about ambulatory panda drawings and talking felines.

"She asked," Ranma shrugged uncomfortably.

"There's this thing I've got to tell you about, it's called lying to parents for their own good," the Summers girl started, right before realizing who she was talking to and wincing. "Okay, maybe you've got a reason not to do that again."

The pigtailed boy grimaced at her before heading out of the kitchen, and the Slayer winced. Now, she was sitting with her hysterical mother, and no backup whatsoever in trying to help calm her down. "Um, don't worry," she tried, slowly. "I've made it through this long... other than that time I died." This didn't help the situation.

HR.

"Damn it, this isn't funny," a dark haired man in a set of urban patterned fatigues grumbled, as he rummaged through the rear compartment of a dark station wagon in the woods surrounding Sunnydale. "Who took my rifle?"

"Calm down, I was just bagging a deer," another man replied, as he came around the vehicle himself, some blood visible on his hands. "I ain't eating the bullshit they've been supplying us for another day, or I'll go on a shooting rampage in the town down there."

"The damned thing was loaded with anti-vamp ammo, you..." the first man bit off his insult, grabbing a large bore rifle from the other and checking the magazine.

"Would you relax? The event's already over, and we haven't been called in yet," the hunter dismissed, just as a loud beeping noise emanated from the front of the vehicle. "That's probably the Council ordering us out of here now."

"Yeah, yeah," the sniper grumbled, beginning to field strip his weapon to make sure it was still in working order while the other went and checked the message. About twenty seconds later, there was a loud whistle from the front of the station wagon, and the sniper put down the rifle's stock, walking around to see what was up.

"Looks like we've got action after all," the hunter said, grinning and holding up a set of papers that had been faxed through to them. "Apparently something really weird happened during the Cruciamentum. Says here the Watcher's gone rogue, and the Slayer's some sort of demon."

"Hell, that's a screw up," the sniper whistled. "I'll take the Watcher, you get the Slayer?" His partner just shrugged, hopping into the car and tossing him one of the sheets of paper. The older, auburn haired woman shown in the picture looked familiar for some reason, but he couldn't place why.

HR.

Ranma decided that getting out of the Summers household when the getting was good had been a rather good idea, even if he could still feel Buffy's murderous glare on his back. Still, it had seemed like a pretty private moment, and he'd had more than a few of those wrecked by a bunch of people showing up and listening in.

As he stopped in front of a variety store only a few blocks from Buffy's place and wondered if they had any of the supplies that he'd been unable to find in her kitchen, he noticed a glint of metal reflected against the glass, along with the intensification of the nameless sensation crawling along his back. Hurriedly, he dove sideways, hearing a loud crack and feeling a burning sensation run along his right upper arm. cursing and moving his left hand up to feel the hole in Buffy's father's old shirt and the blood that was soaking the fabric, he rolled again, the next shot tearing a hole in the sidewalk behind him.

Finally managing to look around for the threat, he saw a tall man in grey and black clothes turning a large, heavy looking pistol to track him, his hand beginning to tense. The Moko-Takabisha that ripped out of Ranma's own palm was a rather weak effort, but it didn't really have to be much as it shoved the other man's arm violently upward and backwards, discharging the gun into the air before the martial artist lunged forward, twisting it back behind his opponent and squeezing the man's hand until he dropped the weapon with a yelp of pain.

"Damn it, he's got..." the man started, right before Ranma noticed the small radio receiver in his ear and yanked it out painfully.

"Okay," the pigtailed boy said conversationally, studying the gun he held in one hand speculatively. "This ain't U.S. Military issue, 'least the troops at Okinawa didn't have 'em, so who'd my old man piss off this time?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ranma's prisoner growled, trying to squirm loose despite the fact that every time he moved the arm behind his back caused him quite a lot of pain. He knew that his partner would arrive in a minute, and he didn't want to be seen spilling everything to some random kid, even if he was supposedly a demon. Besides, he didn't know anything about the kid's father.

"Right," the martial artist sighed. "If I let ya go, you gunna turn around and try to kill me? Wait, don't answer that." The soldier was about to tell him what he could go do with his offers to let him go, when he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and fell to the ground unconscious.

Ranma frowned as he looked down at the crumpled figure. Dusk wouldn't be for a few hours yet, so it was probably safe to leave him. Looking down at the guy's gun, he decided he would keep it and see how much it went for at a pawn shop. When he turned around to head back to Buffy's place, and the first-aid kit that he hoped would be there in order to deal with the now rather painful wound on his arm, he came face to face with another guy in camouflage clothing, holding a very long rifle. He rolled his eyes. "You're not gunna try and shoot me with that from five feet away, are ya?" he asked, irritably.

The man just looked between his partner's apparent target and the unconscious heap on the ground, rather stunned. He'd been tracking his own target, as she walked down the street away from an apartment house, when he'd heard the less than promising sounds from the radio link in his right ear. He'd quickly dropped surveillance on her to rush to the other man's aid, only to see him completely incapacitated, and the target casually playing with his gun.

As he met the younger man's eyes, he asked, "This is going to sound stupid, but do I know you?"

Ranma squinted at him, tilting his head sideways as he thought. "Were you there with the big demon god thing in China three years ago?" he tried.

"With the monks?" the sniper returned, nodding. "You're the weirdo shapeshifter who tossed Benson into a tree for hitting on your female shape."

"Gee, thanks," Ranma muttered, his expression turning dark rather quickly.

"Hey, hey, no offense," the sniper tried to raise his hands placatingly, only realizing that he was actually raising his rifle to firing position instead as the younger man twitched.

"So why're you two trying to shoot me in the back?" Ranma demanded, gesturing over to the other soldier, who was slowly groaning and moving a hand to rub his head.

The sniper shrugged. "All we got was that a Slayer and her Watcher had gone rogue, something about demon possessions." Ranma just rolled his eyes, extracting a Japanese ward of protection and smacking it onto his own arm.

"I'm not a Slayer. I'm also not a demon. As for the Watcher," he looked uncomfortable. "I'll have to beat the shit out of you if you touch her. On principle, if nothing else."

The sniper considered this, recalling what he'd seen demon warding talisman like the one on the boy's arm do when he'd worked in Asia. "All right, but they'll probably send other groups after we report we didn't get you."

Ranma nodded. "Yeah, whatever," he muttered, before heading down the street. As he turned a corner, the man on the ground finally regained enough of his senses to look around. "What the hell happened?" he asked, confused.

"SNAFU," the sniper reported, offering him a hand up. "I'll explain on the way back to base."

HR.

"Yep, you're doing this on purpose," Buffy muttered, as Ranma stood with his bleeding arm over the sink, the blonde inspecting it while her mother hovered nervously in the background.

"It's not a really big deal," the martial artist shrugged it off, trying to be reassuring. "It passed right through."

"You know, that doesn't help," the Summers girl muttered. "Are you trying to give her an aneurism?"

"Oh, it's fine," Joyce said, walking over to a chair and slumping down in it. "After all, it's just my daughter fighting vampires, and one of her friends being shot in the arm. Nothing important, really."

"Wow, I think that was more sarcastic than Nabiki and Xander put together," Ranma observed, wincing as Buffy wrapped a bandage firmly over the wound.

"That should probably get stitches rather than my quick patch job, but I'm not sure what the hospitals around here would do to you," Buffy said.

"Demon doctors or something?" Ranma asked, curiously.

Buffy shook her head. "Worse. HMOs."

The pigtailed boy just looked confused for a moment before shrugging. "I'd probably pull stitches out somehow anyways," he dismissed. "Should heal up in a few days."

Buffy nodded, and Joyce was about to make a comment about gun shot wounds, the movies, and how reality doesn't work at all like them, when there was a loud, shattering crash from the direction of the living room. Without missing a beat, the slayer reached into the silverware drawer, pulling out two viciously serrated steak knives and tossing one to Ranma.

"H... hey, wait a minute, those are my best steak knives," Joyce stammered, pointing to the one in her daughter's hand. The girl ignored this comment, creeping over to the kitchen door and looking down the hallway, unable to see much due to the fact that the porch light had burnt out a couple of days ago, and the new moon didn't provide terribly much light. She was squinting to make out the shadowed figure who was looking warily around the front entry way, when Ranma moved quietly past her and hugged the wall, managing to get behind the intruder. Buffy raised her hand and dropped it, just as Ranma lunged forward, grabbing the intruder around the shoulders and shoving it forward.

"Gah!" a rather familiar voice yelled, as the martial artist was launched forward due to his opponent's roll, and the two came far enough into the light for Buffy to see facial features.

"Angel?" she asked, blinking down at her boyfriend as he crouched on the floor, Ranma picking himself up from nearby.

"Y'know, doors have these things called handles; you can use 'em to open 'em without destroying the frames or hinges," Ranma muttered. "Well, at least you didn't knock a hole in the wall."

Hearing the comment, and not any explosions, or energy blasts, or... whatever Slayer battles sounded like, Joyce poked her head out the kitchen door, blinking as she caught sight of the crouching man.

"Buffy?" She started, looking between her daughter, the newcomer and their rather.. unusual house guest. "Why is your eighteenth century history tutor standing on our broken front door?" Thinking for a moment she continued, "I thought he came through the window."

"Oh, the door..." Angel started, standing, and apparently missing the reference to Buffy's window as he brushed himself off. "I," his eyes flicked back and forth across the scene, until he noticed Ranma climbing to his feet. "I tripped, and... the door must have been kind of rotten, because it fell right in on me."

"That still doesn't explain why you're here," Joyce said, trying to repress a smile. She didn't know what was going on, but at the very least it reminded her of a few bad soap operas.

"Well, I..." the dark haired vampire started. "I thought I saw some blood on the sidewalk leading to the house, I thought... um, a burglar had broken in and hurt someone, or something."

"Angel?" Buffy asked, where she was standing behind the babbling man, rather surprised, as she was pretty sure she'd never seen him this panicked. "She knows."

"She knows?" The pale skinned man turned back to the Slayer. "She knows... I'm a vampire?"

"Well she does now," the bottle blonde replied, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Angel was about to say something to that, when Ranma grabbed him by the arm. "C'mon, I'll explain, we should get outta here."

"Hmm?" The vampire asked, looking to the martial artist, before he gestured to Buffy's mother, who had a speculative look on her face and was eying the banister of the stairs.

"Right, I'm going to patrol the graveyards with Ranko, see you later, Buffy," Angel said quickly, as he and Ranma left the house.

"Cowards," Buffy huffed, irritably.

HR.

"So, that's it." Buffy said, flopping back on her bed as her mother flipped through her diary.

"You're sure this is it this time, I'm not going to find out Principal Snyder is actually a shapeshifter tomorrow morning, am I?" Joyce responded, wincing at the number of times it was recorded that she'd grounded her daughter due to Slayer business.

"If you do, it'll be a surprise to me," Buffy responded, "but it would be nice to have an excuse to slay him."

"That isn't funny, Buffy," her mother rebuked.

"It is from over here," she responded, before sighing. "But yeah, that's everything, I promise." The teenager looked at her parent expectantly, waiting for her reaction, and when she didn't get it after a few minutes, she asked "Well?"

"Well," Joyce said, putting her daughter's diary down on her dresser. "I'm going to have to have a little talk with Mr. Giles, and especially Angel," Buffy winced, "but from what both you and Ranma have told me, this isn't going away. I'm... proud of you, and terrified, and angry, and... just... promise to be careful."

Buffy nodded, and was about to say something when her mother hugged her.

HR.

"Hey, nice new door," Xander said, as he tapped on the glass of one of the two that made up the entrance to the library.

"Yeah, well they haven't replaced the half of the computer lab that got totaled," Willow grumbled as she walked in behind him, looking far more grumpy than she usually did. This feeling only became more strongly entrenched in her mind as she saw Giles, Ms. Calendar and Mrs. Smith sitting around the central research table, the new one having apparently been swiped from the cafeteria. Each of them were wearing very serious looks.

"Okay," Xander said, giving voice to Willow's thoughts. "What's escaped and how high am I gunna scream when I see it? I've gotta know, since I should probably be far away from the school if the octave's too far up there. Gotta conserve my man-cred, after all."

"Nothing's escaped," Giles responded, taking off his glasses and rubbing them.

"That we know of," Jenny quickly cut in.

"That we know of," the librarian continued. "It's just that we need to speak to Buffy and Ranko, and we felt that you should be here as well."

"Did Buffy blow off training and you want me to try and act ashamed again?" Xander asked, frowning.

"Actually, this time, it wasn't them who screwed up," Jenny explained, causing both Giles and Nodoka to flinch, though Willow noted that the Japanese woman had reacted much more violently.

"Ah, this should be good," Xander said, looking somewhat confused. "So, what'd ya do, G-man?"

"Nothing," Giles responded. "I believe that is the problem, if I'm understanding things correctly."

That totally confused the brown haired boy, so he decided to cut his losses and sit down at the table, waiting. When the door swung open again, it revealed Buffy and Ranko, the latter with an obvious bandage wrapped around her upper arm.

"Ranma? What happened to your arm?" Nodoka asked, nervously, causing Willow to shoot a confused glance to Xander, who returned it.

"So, ya figured it out, huh?" the redhead returned, calmly.

Nodoka nodded. "After I saw you change, I called Nabiki in Nerima and asked her about it," she said, standing up and walking towards her child. "I'm so sorry, Ranma-chan, if I'd have known, I would have never asked you to..."

"What, so you would have drugged Akane or Ukyo, instead," Ranko accused, causing Nodoka to stop in her tracks, surprised.

"Only reason I survived that was 'cuz the drug you gave me only works on women," the martial artist explained. "My male form could shrug it off, but pretty much any normal girl in Nerima?" She shook her head.

"Wait, male form?" Xander said, but was summarily ignored. "I feel kinda queasy for thinking she's hot, even if I don't quite know what's going on... but at least she's not a bug."

"Ranma, I..." Nodoka began again, but wasn't really sure what to say to that accusation.

"Look, all I wanna know from you is why you did it," the pigtailed girl responded. "I get the Seppuku pledge, it's just like a bunch of stuff the old man did. If I didn't learn to fall, I broke a leg, and if I didn't learn to fight, I got beat up. Not being manly enough gettin me killed just seemed kinda an extension on that, but why the hell would you lock teenaged girls with ANY advantages or weapons removed in a room with a hungry vampire?"

Willow immediately turned white. "Y... you what?" she stammered, shocked.

"Ranma..." This time, Nodoka wasn't immediately interrupted, so she began to speak. "While you and your father were gone, I began dabbling in some forms of magic, to keep myself occupied. The council noticed me, and offered access to their spells in return for my recruitment as a Watcher."

"So she became a Watcher because her life was boring?" Xander asked, looking confusedly at Giles. "How would that help?"

Nodoka continued, ignoring the comment. "I swore an oath on my family's honor when I joined the council, to do what they asked of me in return. Recruiting a Slayer and performing the Cruciamentum on her, when the time came, was part of that responsibility, but I didn't realize that until later."

Buffy suddenly snapped her head to the side, as she felt a stream of chilled air. The library had been feeling unusually cold for a while now, but suddenly it was a lot worse. When she noted that the redhead next to her was glowing softly, she actually found herself shuffling a little backwards away from her.

"So you participated in an event that's probably killed dozens of people before," Ranma was interrupted by Giles clearing his throat.

"Hundreds, actually," he said, before his automatic correction instinct gave way to common sense and he winced. "Um, never mind me."

"Hundreds," Buffy could definitely feel the cold now, "of people, because you gave your word that you would do it?" Nodoka reluctantly nodded, and was about to try and defend herself when her child kept speaking. "I always figured Honor was a way to keep everything level. How jerks with the kinda power I've got were kept from abusing it, if they didn't have the decency to do it themselves. I always followed it, 'cuz even if I knew the old man was stretching it sometimes, I always figured it was a good thing." The glare that was leveled at Nodoka after this statement actually caused her to gulp and try to shuffle back in her chair. "Now I know, it's just a reason for self-righteous assholes to feel better about themselves for being assholes."

Turning quickly, the martial artist left the library, and Buffy distantly realized that her breath had stopped fogging up. "Well... that went well," she muttered, looking around the room.

Nodoka nodded stiffly, before standing and walking out herself, while Jenny sighed. "I thought inviting Xander and Willow would keep the screaming to a minimum," she muttered. "Guess I was right."

"Someone want to tell me what's going on?" Xander finally burst out, after a few minutes of silence.

HR.

Aura stood in front of the school's front doors, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. What she was about to do was likely popularity suicide, but she had made up her mind several days before, at about the same time a vampire had tried to cave her skull in with a globe stand.

Though she liked to laugh along with Cordy when she made jokes about how lame and weird Summers and her friends were, the fact was that it was starting to get hazardous to her health to pretend that the undead problem in Sunnydale wasn't her problem. Straightening her shoulders as she reiterated the reason she was doing what she was, the dark skinned girl started towards the library, only to see a familiar redhead marching stiffly in the other direction.

Turning and matching the girl's stride, she said "Hey." The redhead didn't respond. "Hey, you there?" Aura asked, rather tempted to poke the other girl in the arm, or shake her shoulder or something.

"What is it?" Ranko responded, obviously irritable.

"Look, I wanted to ask you a favor," Aura returned, wincing as she saw Cordelia and the others standing at the end of the hall. "I wanted to know if you'd teach me a few self-defense techniques. Just enough to escape one of those... things, if I need to." She talked quickly, not letting herself reconsider the idea.

"We've been calling them rabbits recently," Ranko offhandedly replied, before frowning. "And now ain't the best time to be asking me for a favor."

"Look, if you want, I can pay for it, but I'm serious. I've been attacked twice in two weeks, and..."

"Aura! Are you going to come or not?" Cordelia's voice came from where she was talking. "Class is starting in five minutes."

The black haired girl nodded and started away from the martial artist, looking over her shoulder. "I'll think about it," Ranko replied, heading towards the closest exit.

HR.

"Where... the hell am I now?" Ryoga panted, as he held himself up on a wall that looked at least sort of like sandstone, but felt like plywood. He'd been enjoying spending the day with that nice British couple in the warehouse, when he'd volunteered to go and get a pack of PEZ for the girl. He should have known by now that leaving the building would end up with him wandering somewhere on the other side of the planet, but she had really seemed to want the PEZ.

As it was, he was pretty sure he was still in the United States, as he'd seen a lot of English on some of the signs he'd passed recently, including a keep out sign. Strangely, it had been on a door that lead outside.

"Damn you, Saotome," the lost boy grumbled, pretty halfheartedly as he wandered down a few more feet of hallway, entering a large room with several expensive looking objects on pedestals around the outside edges.

Nervously, he shambled towards the middle, wondering how he could get out of the room without breaking something. His question was answered as he tripped over the lip of a large stone box that was laying in the middle of the floor, falling fully into it. Apparently, he couldn't, as he felt the crunch of pottery breaking under his hand, and looked over to see the desiccated remains of a person staring back at him.

He blinked several times, but he was still looking at a very dead body. "Guh..." he said, before the body in question abruptly sat up, kissing him on the lips.

"Guh..." he repeated, before he stood slowly, turned away from the box, and started running... right through a wall.

HR.

The school day had ended and Principal Snyder sat in his office, shuffling a few papers around on his desk. After a day of dealing with the vermin that were the students, he was content with his little sliver of peace and quiet. Unfortunately, such a luxury was not to last, as one of his most vexing, though paradoxically least trouble-making, students poked her head through the door. "Miss Smith. To what do I owe this displeasure?"

"Um," Ranko started, "I just wanted to apologize." Snyder blinked, as this was not among his realm of normal experiences with the scourges of the school. "I skipped all of my classes to day." As she finished, she stepped fully into the room.

"Really," the little man began, a sneer on his lips. "And what, pray tell, was important enough for you to break a number of school rules at once?"

"If I had gone to class, it would have messed everyone up, and no one would have learned anything," the redhead explained.

"I see," the principal replied. "Or rather, I don't. How could you have possibly caused any of your fellow locusts to fail to learn any more than they already do?"

"You remember my science project?" Ranko started. "A little frustration caused me to over do it. Today I was furious."

"I fail to see how your insistence on ignoring physics is important here."

"I was glowing," Ranko admitted. "And trying to control myself was starting to cause fog. I think people might have noticed that."

Snyder considered this for a moment. It did rather sound as though the girl in front of him would have caused rather a lot of havoc had she stayed in class, but she did break the rules. On the other hand, she was the first student he had ever had come in to apologize for anything. It actually felt pretty good. Strange, really. "And why, exactly, did you feel the need to apologize? I am sure that none of your contemporaries would ever even consider doing such."

"Well, when I started here, I promised that I would obey all of the rules," Ranko stated. "And I just wanted you to know that I don't take breaking that promise lightly. If at all possible, it won't happen again."

"I see," he said, after a few minutes of deliberation. "Obviously, you are going to be punished for this infraction," the man began, "but I can't see a suspension being the best choice. Can't let you get away with missing more classes." After another moment of consideration, he finished, "Since none of the slackers calling themselves students know anything about being a productive member of society, I'll take this chance to make sure you do. For the rest of the year, you will be the first choice in assisting any teacher with any help they require in whatever preparations they deem necessary."

"That's fine," Ranko agreed, much to Snyder's surprise.

"Good. Now get out of my office."

END.

Council Screwup Count: 13.

Note, Hopefully for next chapter, we'll provide a list of the screwups. Of course, then we may find more, and we'll have to add an author screwup counter. Now that's no fun.


	11. Chapter 11: Fallout 3

Author's Note: Wow, we've really got to get through this section of the plot before we run out of games.

Chapter 11: Fallout 3.

"So, Miess Zummers, you still refuce to talka," Xander said, in a foreign accent so off that Buffy couldn't really tell who he was trying to imitate.

The Slayer shook her head. "It's weird, yeah, but it's not end of the world weird. I just figure it's a good idea for... Ranko to tell you herself."

"Yeah, well that's easy for you to say, you haven't spent the last few weeks ogling her,"the brown haired boy complained.

"I don't know, I think Buffy's right," Willow shook her head. "It's just some gender confusion, it's not going to destroy Sunnydale or anything."

"Hey, this is Sunnydale. if you haven't forgotten, an unusually large concentration of mosquitoes has the potential to blow up the planet here," Xander disagreed.

"So, are you talking big mosquitoes, or..." Willow started, before Buffy raised a hand, moving slowly up to the library door, keeping her head below the circular windows.

"See?" Xander whispered to the redhead next to him as the two skulked up behind their friend, "I bet whatever's in there has something to do with Ranko."

Willow just rolled her eyes, moving up next to where Buffy was pressing her ear against the crack of the door. "What's going on?" she whispered, worried.

Buffy didn't respond, only bringing a finger to her lips and shushing the more timid girl. Still, Willow was rather curious, so she quickly sprang up, peeking through the window for half a second before ducking down again.

"Why are you hiding and listening in on your mom?" she asked, confused. Buffy just shushed her again, so she bent and put her own ear to the wood below Buffy's.

Xander contemplated joining them, but was pretty sure that there was nowhere he could put himself in that situation that wouldn't at least get him slapped, so he shuffled backwards, leaning against the wall.

HR.

"Um, well, you see, there's a perfectly logical explanation for..." Rupert Giles sputtered, as he was glared down by a woman who was several inches shorter than him and at least that many years younger. Still, it felt rather a lot like he was being dressed down by his own mother as she lay down what she knew, what Buffy had told her, about the Slayer and her Watcher. Fortunately, it seemed that she had wound down after his first stuttering and unsure attempts at an explanation, as she just stood in front of him, her hands on her hips and a glare that would cause the Master to twitch firmly aimed at him.

"Mrs. Summers." The Brit took off his glasses, rubbing them on his suit jacket. "What Buffy has told you is entirely true. Yes, even that part about torturing her." Joyce was about to comment about that, but Giles kept right on going, thinking that if he let her start yelling again he just might lose his nerve and move to Greenwich. "The problem is that becoming angry with me for that is rather pointless and short sighted."

"Excuse me?" Joyce demanded, her voice incredulous.

"The Slayer draws, and is drawn to trouble. You recall when you moved a year and a half ago due to the gym fire incident?" The Watcher stood, and began pacing around the central library table. "Buffy would have found trouble on the level of the Master without me. I, and all other Watchers, am supposed to train a Slayer, so her inevitable encounters with the supernatural will, um, end in her favor."

"And that includes this... Crucia-mantus?" Joyce asked, the incredulity clear in her voice. There was a soft thudding noise from the door, but both parties ignored it.

"No," Giles admitted. "It doesn't, and I've never come up with a satisfactory reason for the damned thing." The bitterness in the older man's voice surprised Buffy's mother long enough that she didn't take the obvious opportunity for a snide comment. "Unfortunately, tradition is a rather powerful force, and much more so for larger groups of people. And before you begin yelling indignantly at me about following tradition without thought," he quite remembered how THAT explanation had gone over earlier in the day, "if Buffy had reached 18, without being killed by something because my training wasn't good enough, or my information wasn't timely enough...

"I would have put her through the Cruciamentum, and hoped that she could defeat it, since otherwise, she and I would be fighting the entire Watcher's council, who would want to... get rid of us, in order to gain a more cooperative Slayer." The Brit let out a snort. "Of course, given what Smith's pulled, that's going to happen anyway, so I suppose there isn't going to be a Cruciamentum on Buffy's eighteenth birthday."

"What are you saying?" Joyce asked, her area of concern suddenly switching from Giles himself to a much larger group.

"I don't know," the Watcher admitted. "Ranko's encountered one strike team that I'm sure was sent by the Council already, and if she is, in fact, the current Slayer, though the evidence of that is tentative at best, there will be others. Of course, Buffy is no longer the primary target, but with Buffy, that doesn't matter."

Joyce sort of wished that the tweed clad man had stopped after assuring her that Buffy wasn't the Council's primary target, though she still would have felt bad for Ran... whatever the second half of that name was supposed to be. Of course, she knew her daughter as well as he did, and didn't even really need him to explain what he'd said. The target of their activities was one of her daughter's friends, so she would get involved regardless.

"I hope you know I'm still as frantically worried as I was when I first stormed in here," the brown haired woman sighed.

"Oh yes, well... I'm terribly sorry about that," the Watcher responded. Joyce was unsure if he was trying to be sarcastic, until he continued. "Of course, Buffy's tendency to stick her, um, neck out for her friends is reciprocated rather strongly, so I'm sure we'll find some way to deal with this... probably."

"Remind me never to have you speak at a pep rally," the worried mother griped.

"Perhaps if we scheduled it for the vampires, it would do some good," the librarian muttered.

The room descended into an uncomfortable silence for a few moments after the equally uncomfortable joke, only to be broken shortly after by the swinging open of the library doors, Buffy, Xander and Willow walking in and seeming a bit louder than usual.

"Hey Giles," the Slayer said, waving casually at the bespectacled man. "Oh, Mom, you're here too? Isn't that a surprise seeing you here, of all places!"

"All right, how long were the three of you outside?" Joyce muttered, looking at her daughter suspiciously.

"Well, we studied history out on the front lawn for the last half an hour," Xander said, hopefully.

"Buffy, you've got a little..." Giles said, moving a hand up to his cheek and rubbing a finger down it.

The Slayer blinked, feeling her own cheek and finding a slight impression from a metal plate on the side of the library door.

"So, where is that Ranko, anyways? I really want to talk to her, or him," Xander said, in an obviously overly loud voice.

Buffy just sighed irritably.

HR.

Jenny Calendar sat in her classroom, typing furiously. All she was doing was writing example programs for a few of her classes over the next few weeks, "Hello World" in every possible language and variation imaginable, mostly, but it was busy work that she actually needed to do, and let her think while she did it.

All throughout the day, she'd thought about the confrontations the day before and that morning. At the heart of each of them was something that had been held back, for what had been thought to be good reasons. She herself had a secret quite like those ones, and as she'd thought about it, she'd wondered if the reason she'd kept it was really such a good one.

Yes, her primary mission in Sunnydale was clear, and telling Buffy, or even Giles about it could possibly endanger the goal, but she wasn't even sure what that goal was supposed to be.

Hearing a soft chime from her computer, she brought her attention back to it for a moment, reading the line that had last been written in the text editor. "7 FORMAT(13H HELLO, WORLD)" She blinked at it, wondering why she'd decided to write in Fortran, before closing the editor and noticing that the E-mail icon on her task bar was flashing.

In her inbox was one message, a reply to one she'd sent earlier in the day. When she read it, a dark frown grew on her face. "Damn it," she cursed, reaching out and hitting the power button before she could realize what she'd just done. As the monitor went black, she muttered, "And I didn't even save my work, either."

Standing up, she smoothed the wrinkles out of her blouse, and headed for the classroom door.

HR.

As Buffy walked down the hallway with her mother, recalling what she'd heard Giles say in her mind, and trying to ignore the fact that Willow and Xander had scuttled off shortly after the group's incredibly subtle entrance into the library, she couldn't help but be a lot more confused than she had been this morning. She'd been more confused than this over the weekend, mostly around the time she'd found out about the Cruciamentum, but that feeling had been subsumed with a rather healthy dose of angry annoyance at her Watcher for the last little while.

Giles' words, spoken while he was unaware that she'd been listening to them, had thrown her perfectly righteous outrage at him right out the window. "I don't think I've ever felt warm and fuzzy about someone threatening to drug me and lock me in with a vampire before," she muttered, just loudly enough for her mother to hear it and look strangely at her. "Giles," the teen clarified, shaking her head. "He actually gave a good reason for not telling me about that ritual thing, and I believe him."

"Mmh," Joyce said, her voice practically the definition of non-committal.

"At least he explained things better than Ranma's mom, even if he didn't know I was there," the younger Summers continued, getting a curious look from the other woman. "The words 'Self-righteous asshole' were used, and I agreed with them," she clarified.

"Buffy, language," Joyce said reproachfully.

"Hey, I was just quoting," the high schooler justified.

The brown haired woman decided to let the transgression slide for the moment. "So Ranma's meeting with Nodoka... didn't go well, I take it?"

"She was glowing. And I don't mean the bright, beautiful skin type of glow, either. I mean, radioactive... but it was blue... and really cold."

"I'd take that as a bad sign," Joyce muttered, Buffy giving an emphatic nod. "I suppose, given what I know of this fight, she can stay in our guest room as long as she needs to."

"I'll be sure to tell her that," Buffy said, smiling slightly. "If I can find her, anyways."

Joyce nodded. "Well, I suppose it's a good thing I called the foreign exchange program and canceled our Peruvian after finding out about the Slaying thing," she commented to herself quietly.

"Wait," Buffy said, confused. "You signed us up for the exchange program? It'd be nice to get a memo about this sort of thing, you know."

"It must have been lost in the same in-tray as your Slayer status," Joyce replied, before turning and leaving her speechless daughter in the middle of the hall.

"I had a comeback for that," Buffy grumbled.

HR.

"I've got it!" Spike looked up as he heard the door to his and Dru's portion of the warehouse slam, and the strange guy with the umbrella and the fangs marched in, a good portion of his legs covered in thick mud. In one hand, he triumphantly held a pack of small pink tablets, the word 'PEZ' emblazoned across the side.

"You took off for a little more than a day and came back looking like you've been through the sodding wars for one pack of candy?" the bleach blond vampire asked, incredulously.

"The store was pretty far away," the foreign boy protested.

Spike kept right on giving him a look, but Drucilla stepped out of the shadows, where she had been doing something the male vampire didn't really want to look in on with a couple of her dolls, and reached out one hand for the candy.

Ryoga obediently dropped it in, and the brown haired woman suddenly growled, her face shifting to its vampiric appearance as she lunged at the food in her own hand as though it were an unsuspecting club goer.

"Gwa... Huh..."" the lost boy stammered, looking between the feeding Dru and Spike, who wore an expression of bemusement.

"How is she even doing that?" the lost boy asked.

"After a while," Spike began slowly, "you learn that there are some things that are never meant to be known. This is one of them."

Ryoga nodded calmly for several seconds, before realizing that he'd just seen a woman turn into a monster with golden eyes and fangs larger than his. He had previously seen Spike in full vampiric form, and thus normally would have just asked what was going on. Unfortunately, he'd also, just an hour or two before, been kissed by a corpse, and he was somewhat rattled. "Gah!" he finally yelped, turning in a random direction and charging out of the room, through a utility door that led deeper into the bowels of the warehouse.

"Where is he going?" Drucilla asked, in her usual dreamy tone, after finishing consuming her candy.

"You scared him off, love," Spike replied, walking over to the door and peering through it. "Funny, I thought that utility shaft was a dead end."

Dru was about to reply to that, when there was a knock at the door that lead into the warehouse's main floor, and Spike sighed, heading up the stares to answer it. When it opened he saw a rather pretty girl standing on the other side, wearing a dress that sort of looked like a poncho with a bunch of dragons and people being eaten on it. "Yeah, what is it?" the vampire demanded, as he licked his lips, noting that he was rather hungry.

"I am looking for a boy with an umbrella," the girl replied. "He wears a yellow and black spotted head wrap."

"Ah, him, just missed 'im, sorry," Spike said, shaking his head. "Not sure where he went."

"Ah, I see." The girl frowned, worriedly rubbing at one cheek, where spike could see some sort of rash. "Thank you very much." She seemed to look at him in a worryingly familiar fashion, as though sizing him up to be bitten, but he shook that idea off as she turned and started to walk away.

Leaping forward and unsheathing his fangs, the blond caught the girl easily and bit into her neck, this one nowhere near as hard to pierce as the lost boy's. Just as he began to suck, though, everything went wrong. The girl jerked away from him, screaming and running out of the warehouse, as he began coughing and hacking, his throat filling with dust and what tasted like dead flesh.

"Oh, what in the hell?" Spike finally managed to croak out, after his trachea had apparently abandoned its attempted escape. "What's next, someone who just makes me disintegrate when I bite 'em? Shoulda stayed out of this goddamned hellmouth, that's what I shoulda..." his irritated grumblings were cut off as he stalked down stairs, slamming the door behind him.

HR.

"We there yet?" Elder Cologne of the Joketsu Zoku sighed to herself as she heard her great granddaughter ask that question for the fifteenth time. Granted, they had flown pretty much straight through from Japan to the United States, but the fact that there was still nothing but ocean below them should answer the question readily enough.

"I can still have you transferred to the pet compartment with Mousse, you know," the diminutive woman grumbled, as she lowered the newspaper she'd been reading and placed it on a pile of Los Angeles area papers which she'd been searching through for Ranma-esque weirdness. So far, all she'd found was a bunch of weirdos in pajamas running around San-Francisco and a town with an extraordinarily large obituary section.

"Shampoo be good," the purple haired girl in the seat behind Cologne replied, quickly, only to receive a snort from the brunette in the seat beside her, who had apparently been asleep before the other had spoken.

For a moment, Cologne caught herself wondering if the airframe of the 747 could take a fight between Ukyo and Shampoo, before reminding herself that neither of them were that stupid... probably. Thankfully, the Tendo girl was still in Nerima, as her older sister drew the line for helping her quite a distance before an 80,000 yen plane ticket. This probably should have cheered up the Amazon elder, though there was something in the back of her brain telling her that she'd missed something important, and that perhaps she should have just waited for her son-in-law to get back to Japan.

"We there yet?" the grey haired woman sighed.

HR.

The light reflected off of the walls in strange patterns as Nodoka knelt in front of a single candle, gently turning a small object in her hands as she stared down at it. The tanto gleamed back at her, just recently cleaned and sharpened, against the background of her tweed kimono. She hadn't really thought that she would need a white one, and the garment she was wearing was her official garb during Watcher's council meetings, representing one of the two things she'd failed catastrophically in being.

She'd already penned her note, the black ink drying on a sheet of rice paper beside the candle, and her sword was laying up against a wall nearby, though she knew that she wouldn't have a second. She took a slow, deep breath as she stopped moving the blade, clenching its handle firmly in her right hand and orienting it towards her stomach. Just as she was about to stab, the door to the room she sat in creaked open.

The auburn haired woman turned her head to see the boy she now knew was her son standing at the door with a backpack slung over one shoulder, the look on his face one of obvious disappointment. "R... Ranma," she said, uncertainly, as he walked over and began pulling clothing out of the dresser next to her.

"Taking the coward's way out," the pigtailed martial artist observed, as he got to the bottom of one drawer and began rummaging through the contents of the next.

"Excuse me?" The comment had obviously stung, as Nodoka leveled a glare at the boy. "This is necessary to regain my honor after..."

"Like I said, coward's way out," the martial artist continued. "Thought about doin' it a few times in Nerima, revealing the curse to you and getting ready to get my head chopped off." He laughed. "Woulda solved a few problems. Woulda also meant I'd lost."

"You felt admitting your curse and waiting for my decision would instantly result in your death," the older woman shook her head. After a few moments of thought, she continued, "I'm not sure if you would have been right."

Ranma just shrugged, removing the last of his clothes from the dresser and slamming the drawer shut. "Guess it doesn't matter now, does it?"

Nodoka didn't respond, only turning her vision back to her hand as she heard her son's footsteps receding. When she realized it was empty, she opened and closed it several times in surprise, looking around. Nearby, laying in two jagged pieces on the carpet, was the blade of the tanto. The hilt, with the family crest on it, was gone.

HR.

Buffy walked next to Ranma, wondering, for about the fifth time, if she should ask what had happened since she'd seen the redhead in the library earlier. Granted, what had been talked about then would be enough to upset anyone, but the mood seemed darker, somehow, and he was carrying around a backpack roughly half her size.

She'd resisted the temptation to ask the previous four times due to the fact that they'd been in graveyards and distractions had turned up just as she'd decided to do so, but now they were just walking down the street towards her home, the silence getting rather uncomfortable. "So, um... are you..."

"Buffy!" a voice called out from down the street, and the blonde's mind skipped around a little bit for a second.

"Are you Buffy?" she muttered to herself, blinking, before she noticed Angel running towards the two of them, his eyes looking rather wild. "Angel?" She asked, concerned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," The undead man said, reassuringly. "Your mother wanted me to ask if you could come home for a while before starting to patrol, and bring Ranko." He nodded at the black haired boy.

"Oh, so you talked to Mom?" The slayer asked, blinking. "No wonder you look like a scared rabbit."

"I've had worse," Angel responded. "Though I can't really remember when, right now."

Ranma looked between the two of them, rather confused. "Um, what's Buffy's mom want, and what'd she do to Angel?"

"I'll tell you when you're older," Buffy responded, patting the pigtailed martial artist on the shoulder.

"I'm older than you are," he objected, confused, but was summarily ignored as the three headed back for the Summers household.

HR.

"I call this meeting of the Senior Watcher's Council to order," William Bigsbee, the current Council Head, intoned. "Today we are here to discuss the actions, or lack there of, of the 'Clean-up Crew' we had stationed just outside of Sunnydale. Travers, you have the floor."

"Thank you, sir," Quentin began as he stood. "As you can see in the packets I've provided, the two man crew was dispatched to eliminate the being posing as the Slayer and its former Watcher, Nadoka Saotome." Pausing a moment for emphasis, he continued, "During their operation, Marsh and Jones made contact with the creature, Ranko. It disarmed Jones and had rendered him unconscious before Marsh arrived on the scene. Because of this, we cannot be sure what happened next."

"It says here," one of the three women in the room broke in, "that the supposed Slayer, or 'Ranma', as Marsh called it, is a shape-shifter and that it has only struck one human in his presence, save in self defense."

"And that one time," another woman added, "was when one of the other men in the area tried to 'hit on' her and apparently wouldn't take 'no' for an answer."

"Be that as it may," Bigsbee said, "we have only Marsh's word on what has happened. Considering the dedication Saotome showed in her duties before she was stationed in Nerima, Japan, and how she acted in Sunnydale, it is entirely possible that mental manipulation was involved in this situation."

"If that is the case," Travers interjected, "then we can likely exclude Giles and Summers from being of any use. When I was discussing the matter with Giles, he seemed rather reluctant to consider the imposter a threat."

"I see," the Council's head acknowledged. "We have a threat who may be able to brainwash those around it and can take out an average human with very little trouble. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we should proceed?"

"As I see it," one of the men said, leaning forward in his chair, "we have two options. First, we could use a sniper to eliminate this threat from a distance. Unfortunately, if anyone else we would consider has met this creature in the past or if its radius of effect is large enough, we could have the same problem as we had with Marsh."

"Yes, that could be a problem," another of the men said. "We have no information regarding this threat from before the empowering ritual other than that which Saotome provided, all of which is suspect."

"So we need to send someone who could not possibly have been influenced." Roger Wyndam-Pryce said, bringing a hand up to his chin. "And since all of our field teams are drawn from global militaries or mercenary organizations, that wouldn't leave many options."

"The Slayer," Travers interjected, getting strange looks from the others. He hastened to explain. "The recently awakened one. She's lived in Jamaica with her Watcher for most of her life, and I highly doubt that she ever met this demon before. It's also possible that her status may give her some resistance against the target's abilities."

"Hasn't her Watcher informed us that she's been acting erratically?" Laura Kay Weathermill raised her eyes from reading Travers' report.

"I'm sure Zabuto's just suffering from a case of the jitters," Wyndam-Pryce responded, dismissively. "He's raised the girl for the past decade, after all."

Most of the others frowned, nodding, though Weathermill looked unconvinced. "With the state Sunnydale is already in, a barely trained Slayer, several civilian assistants, and a vampire as its only defenders, the last thing we need is yet another Slayer with mental issues."

Bigsbee nodded. "True, but something definitely must be done. The Hellmouth in Sunnydale is very dangerous, and there is an unidentified demon with free reign of the area. Travers, since you've seen this thing and had recent experience with the Watcher, perhaps you should go and examine the new Slayer, Kendra, isn't it? If you deem her fit, then take her to Sunnydale and eliminate the threat."

Travers was startled, but tried not to let it show on his face. It made sense that the girl have backup in a situation like the one in Sunnydale, and as he thought about it, he couldn't help but like the idea. Perhaps, after the demon was destroyed, he could deal with the small town's... other... problems. "I would be glad to do so," he finally said, nodding.

"Well then, if this matter is settled, let us move on to our next topic." Bigsbee turned to one of the others around the table and said, "Mr. English, please begin with your translation of the Cthongran Prophecy."

HR.

"Happy Birthday!" There were several blinks, some of them almost audible, as Ranma, Buffy and Angel stood in the kitchen, staring at Joyce as though she'd just started dancing around while spouting Vogon poetry.

"Um, Mom, my birthday isn't for another four months," Buffy finally decided to break the silence, looking rather uneasily at the tray of cupcakes the brown haired woman was holding up, with a few candles stuck haphazardly into them.

"I'm aware of when your birthday is, sweetie," the Summers matriarch replied. "It just came to me that when I was told about the Crush..." She shook her head, before continuing, "that ritual, the fact that it had to be done on the eighteenth birthday kept being mentioned."

"Oh," Buffy, Angel and Ranma said at once, each of them surprised.

"Wait, you didn't realize when your birthday was?" Angel asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ranma shrugged uncomfortably. "Never really seemed important,"

"Well, in that case I could always put these away," Joyce said, beginning to turn before an arm reached out and snatched one of the cupcakes without a candle on it. "Buffy?" she snapped, as she saw her daughter chewing on the treat.

The blonde smiled sheepishly before swallowing the cupcake and clearing her throat. "I'll go get Xander. Angel, you go and get Willow. If anyone can help out with a party in two hours, it's them."

"Is anyone going to ask me about this?" Ranma grumbled, though he couldn't help but smile slightly.

END.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter, please review and tell us what you think of it.

Well, last chapter we promised it, and here it is. The full list of council screw-ups, freshly prepared. Of course, this means we found some extra, since the list has magically jumped from 13 to 18 in a chapter with only two entries.

Chapter the first  
1. Forcing Nodoka to choose a Slayer candidate despite her reservations about their ages.  
2. Not making sure the chosen Potential IS a potential... or female. Okay, to be fair, that second one they couldn't really see coming.  
3. Believing that a single detection spell, the bent rebar test and a knife toss were valid tests... when the candidate could do two of those before the ritual.  
4. Smith? Really?

Chapter 2: Electric Boogaloo.  
5. Failing to inform Giles of Nodoka, or clarify their Slayers' status.  
6. Giving a Field Watcher a whopping whole six months of combat training.

The Council doesn't show up in Chapters 3 or 4. If they did, there would be entries for them here.

Chapter V: The Vampire Strikes Back  
7. Failing to check 'Ranko's' birth date, leading to a rushed job, on the same night as a major cosmological convergence.

Chapter 6: I am number 2.  
8. Zabuto not noticing that his Slayer can shoot off blue waves of energy.

Chapter 7... Just, Chapter 7.  
9. Poor planning in general, especially regarding Ranko, and getting her to the testing location with no weapons.  
10. Poor monitoring of the Vampire, not keeping it sedated, and giving it a mouse and an egg salad sandwich. They don't have to eat.  
11. Poor and obvious placement of surveillance, electronic and human.  
12. Poor research.

Chapter 8: Supposedly Funny Joke Not Found, Please Consult Manual.  
13. Failing to chase after the person who actually knows what's going on, rather than questioning a confused Watcher.  
14. Travers winning the gold in the 100 meter long-jump to conclusions.  
15. Not listening to Giles.

Chapter 9: There is no Chapter 9.

Chapter 10: With special Guest Star Daniel Thomas Stack.  
16. Council Screwup in this chapter. Sending a Cleanup Team with a member that has Personal Experience with the Target. They should know enough about their teams and the people involved to avoid that.

Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code.  
17. Assuming a being has shape-shifting, telepathic compulsion, and great demonic power, when just assuming the first would be much more logical.  
18. Not Listening to Zabuto.

Author Screwup Count Unknown.

1. We missed a few council screwups.  
Note: All other instances of this count have been removed due to website's page size restrictions.


	12. Chapter 12: Fallout: New Vegas

Special Disclaimer: Several lines of this chapter were paraphrased or transcribed from the Buffy Season 2 episode "Inca Mummy Girl."

Note: Due to events that will become clear then, the "Council Screwup Count" will be missing for this chapter and appear in the next.

Chapter 12: Fallout: New Vegas.

Willow awoke to the smell of cooking bacon. This wasn't exactly the way she normally awoke, so her eyes cracked open rather reluctantly to the sight of the upholstery on the Summers' living room couch.

Lifting her head and wincing at the stinging sensation lancing down her neck due to the awkward position she had been in, she groaned softly and looked around. She had apparently fallen asleep against the arm of the couch with her neck bent at an absurd angle. Across the couch from her was Xander, looking rather comfortable as he used Angel's lap as a pillow. For his part, the vampire was looking much less comfortable, and emitting smoke. Abruptly, Xander found himself falling to the floor, as Angel shot across the room and away from the sunbeam that had just caught him.

"Mm," she heard Buffy mumble from where she was sleeping on the floor. "Breakfast smells good, Mom."

There were footsteps on the stairs before Joyce responded, "Oh, I see you started breakfast without me." As she walked into the room and looked around she paused before asking, "So, if you're all here, who's cooking the bacon?"

"We have bacon?" came Xander's voice as he pulled himself from the floor, rubbing his head where he'd cracked it against the side of the coffee table. "I like bacon."

"That's not bacon," Ranko grumbled from the armchair across the room. "That's the smell of burning human flesh." Hoisting herself up, the girl said, "Let me go get some real food started." She stretched impressively, causing Willow a bit of envy over the other girl's figure, before heading into the kitchen. "Does anyone have any requests?"

"I could've used a camera," Willow pouted.

"I hate sunlight," Angel grumbled as he shook his still lightly smoking arm.

HR.

Ryoga was lost. This was, of course, his usual state of affairs. Slightly less usual was what he was hearing from the other side of the wall he was leaning on.

"I beg you, do not kill me, I was innocent," a slightly muffled female voice said.

"The people you kill now so that you may live, they are innocent," a man replied.

"I have killed no one!" the girl objected, vehemently.

"You are the chosen one," the man insisted, appearing to completely ignore what she had said. "You must die. You have no choice."

Understandably, Ryoga took exception to this and smashed his way through the wall, just in time to block a blow from a large knife. "I won't let you hurt her!" he shouted, as he stepped between the girl and the obvious madman.

"Step aside," the man demanded. "You do not understand."

"I understand plenty!" Ryoga insisted. "You're about to kill an innocent girl!"

"She is hardly innocent," the man growled, brandishing his knife in an attempt to drive Ryoga back. "And even if she were, she must die. It is her destiny."

"I don't think so," the fanged youth growled right back, stepping into the man's reach and sweeping his arm to the side, deflecting the knife away. His other arm came up and he punched the man in the chest, knocking him back several feet. The man slumped to the floor and was still.

"Did you kill him?" the girl asked, grasping onto Ryoga's shoulder.

"I don't think so," Ryoga replied, stepping forward and leaning down to check on the man. After a moment, he sighed in relief. "Good, he's just knocked out. He should be out for a while by the looks of it. So, why was he trying to kill you?"

"I do not know," the girl insisted. "But thank you, my brave protector." Swinging around Ryoga's arm to face him, she added, "Let me reward your bravery," and pulled him into a kiss. Ryoga passed out.

HR.

A man sat at a small, steel desk, tapping a ballpoint pen against the cover of a black leather notebook. "So, you expect me to believe that these," he gestured in front of him at two maces, a Chinese broadsword, and the largest spatula he'd ever seen, "are all ceremonial or religious devices."

"My spatula is actually a cooking implement," a brown haired girl who was sitting across the table from him chipped in helpfully.

Next to her, a gnarled old woman clutching a staff nodded. "My great-granddaughter misunderstood when you asked about weapons," she responded, glaring at the purple haired girl to her left.

Said girl winced, staring fixedly at the table top. "Shampoo only do what they say, like great-grandmother ask."

The man shook his head, and then took out a small cloth, holding it next to the spatula's blade, and then pulling it towards himself. He raised an eyebrow when the sharp steel cut it in half. "You really should have checked these," he noted, evenly.

"Spatula girl say it cost too, too much money," the purple haired girl responded, before the wrinkled old woman snarled, whacking her on the back of the head with her staff.

The man sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Walking stick, hmm?" he asked, gesturing for the old woman to add her weapon to his collection. She opened her mouth to object, but then sighed again, obliging.

HR.

"Man, I've got to take a leak," Larry Blaisdell grumbled as he hurried to the bathroom. He would have made it out of class sooner, but he had had the rotten luck of having one of the few teachers who refused to let the sports teams have any of the perks they deserved. He failed to see how any knowledge of computers would help him play football. Making his way to one of the urinals, he sighed in relief.

As he washed his hands a moment later, Larry looked in the mirror and noticed something distinctly out of the ordinary. There was a rather large hole in the usually solid wall behind him. He quickly dried his hands and walked over to it. Looking through, he saw the girl's bathroom. With a goofy grin, he stepped through and looked around.

"Huh, so that's what it looks like in here," he commented to himself. "I don't see what's so special about it." With a shrug, he turned around, intent on leaving through the boy's restroom. As he turned, however, he saw something that gave him pause. "Hey, man, what are you doing in here?" he asked, walking over to the strange man lying on the floor. "And where did you get a get-up like that?" he added, eying the light cotton v-neck he was wearing.

Larry gave the man's shoulder a good shake. When that failed to produce a response, he sighed and said, "Well, there goes lunch period. Come on, let's get you to the nurse." As the jock hoisted the other up, the man groaned and began to stir. "You okay, there?" he asked.

"She got away," the man grunted, shrugging off Larry's grip and heaving himself towards the door.

"You should really go and see a nurse or something," Larry insisted. The man didn't respond and just made his way out of the room. "Whatever," the jock shrugged as he turned and headed back through the hole.

HR.

"What exactly... is this?" Willow asked, poking tentatively at a reddish looking lump in the middle of her lunch tray and wishing that she hadn't been too embarrassed to ask Mrs. Summers if she could make a sandwich to take in.

"One of the great mysteries of human civilization," Xander replied, taking a forkful of his own, similar meal.

Tilting her head to the side, Ranko nodded. "Near as I can figure, it's not rat, cow, pig, dog, snake or monkey."

Xander shook his head. "Why did I think finding out you were born a guy would be the weirdest thing about you?"

"Sheltered, I guess," Buffy cut in, sitting down with her own tray.

"Could ya not say that so loud?" the pigtailed redhead grumbled. "I already get awkward enough questions navigating the girls' locker room with my eyes closed."

"You what?!" Xander asked, bolting from his seat, only to get odd looks from the other three. "Well, come on, you have to admit any red blooded guy would be really tempted to take advantage of that sort of thing."

"Xander!" Willow yelped, shocked, only to have her eyes widen as Buffy nodded.

"Gotta admit, he's got a point, Will," the bottle blonde agreed.

"Buffy!" Willow was now horrified, looking down and reluctantly taking a spoonful of the meat-like-product before her as a cover.

"Come on, you wouldn't ever sneak in to see all the guys naked if you could?" The summers girl smirked, observing the blush, and then noticing that Ranko was staring at the ceiling, muttering something in Japanese under her breath. "What was that?"

"She said she's surrounded by perverts," Willow translated. "I've got to agree with her."

"You were right, Xander," Buffy said, looking over at the brown haired boy. "Ranko and Will are so alike, she probably is her Prince Charming."

The boy blinked for a minute, "Um, which one?" he asked, cluelessly.

"Har har," Ranko grumbled. "Heard all these jokes before, ya know."

Willow, for her part, simply hunched even more closely over her food, which was a bit of a mistake, since her nose was now mere inches from the concoction, and its smell. "I hate you all."

"I don't really have to worry about you, you're not the one who has permission to throw rocks at me," Buffy said, cheerfully.

"Got something else to do after school, actually," Ranko replied. "I don't want ya to go soft, though; maybe having Willow chuck some rocks at you could help."

"Gee, thanks," Buffy grumbled, before deciding that a change of subject was in order, preferably one that would make Willow less irritated. "So, what do you guys think about that dance next week?"

"Well, that wasn't obvious or anything," Xander replied, shaking his head.

"What dance?" Ranko asked, confused as usual.

"Are you still sleeping through geography?" Willow asked, sounding somewhat annoyed. "For the exchange week we're having next week, there's going to be a costume dance with a multicultural theme."

"We've got exchange students coming?" The Japanese redhead shook her head. "How out of it was I last week?"

"Uuuuuugh, brains..." Xander replied, raising his hands in the traditional grasping motion of the shambling dead.

"Please, no more zombie references," Buffy cut in. "Let's not tempt fate... again."

Ranko shrugged. "I guess I'll just wear my yukata."

"Aw, it's supposed to be exploring FOREIGN cultures," Willow said, stressing the word. "It'll be more fun if you pick something from someplace other than Japan."

"Like what?" Ranko asked, dubiously.

"Well, I'm going as an Eskimo," the American redhead offered, cheerfully.

"Huh," Ranko said, considering. "I'll think about it."

"Well," Buffy cut in, "If you're not using the yukata, whatever that is, can I take it?"

HR.

Shampoo walked next to her great-grandmother. "Shampoo wish stupid Mousse were here," she grumbled, dragging a rather heavy bag that contained the elder's gear along with her own.

"Even if he were, you would still be carrying my things," Cologne responded. "Honestly, I had you take your weapons through in a hidden weapons pocket for a reason, you know."

"But you said..." the younger Amazon started, only to get a glare from her elder.

"I was trying to tell you not to start any fights, and to use common sense, girl," she rebuked, and then winced. She was suddenly even more unsure than usual about the thought of her legacy passing on to Shampoo when she died.

"Um, this is nice and all, but what are we going to do about Ran-chan?" Ukyo asked, interrupting before Shampoo could speak again.

"For the moment, I wasn't able to find any obvious traces of his presence," Cologne replied. "You two can start searching this town, and I will keep an eye on the news."

"Why're you so sure he's going to show up in the news?" the okonomiyaki chef asked, curiously. When Cologne gave her an incredulous look, she sighed. "Right, it's Ranma. Maybe we should check the weather for spontaneous showers and tornadoes?"

Cologne nodded thoughtfully. "That could work," she commented, wondering if perhaps she could adopt the Kuonji girl.

As the doors to the thoroughfare in front of the airport slid shut behind the three, Shampoo asked, "Where is stupid Mousse?" Cologne just cackled.

HR.

"Oh, you are awake," Ryoga heard a soft, rather musical voice speaking in English as he cracked open his eyes, immediately catching sight of a rather pretty girl looking down at him. "Thank you again for saving me," she continued, smiling.

"I-it was nothing," the lost boy replied, rubbing the back of his head and trying to recall exactly what he'd saved her from. Looking around at the contents of the broom closet they were in, with his pack and umbrella piled to the side, he asked, "Um, where are we?"

"I believe we are in a supply closet in the Sunnydale High School," the girl answered. "If I may ask, what is the name of my brave protector?"

"Oh, um, I'm Ryoga Hibiki," he said, blushing slightly under the girl's attention, though at least now the events of a few hours before were coming back to him. "And, um, what should I call you?"

"I was once called Chasca," the girl replied. "That should be sufficient for now."

Stretching a bit to get some of the stiff feeling out of his limbs, Ryoga asked, "Why was that guy with the knife after you anyways?"

"I would prefer to not talk about it," Chasca shifted uncomfortably. Looking into the boy's eyes, she asked, "May I travel with you? I do not think he would attack me again if you were near."

"Sure, I guess I could do that," Ryoga hedged. It at least made some sense to him, as he certainly didn't want the madman coming after her again, but he could see a few problems. "But I do a lot of camping. You might not like it."

"I am used to, how do you say, roughing it?" the girl replied. "My village was not as advanced as what I have seen recently. I should be fine." After a moment, she added, "Thank you for your concern." Leaning over, she gave Ryoga a kiss on the cheek, nearly causing him to faint.

His head spun, both from the show of affection and the fact that he'd just found himself gaining a new traveling companion. He sort of hoped the girl wasn't inclined to be so affectionate all of the time, as traveling with her would likely be difficult to get used to even if he wasn't constantly at risk of terminal embarrassment.

Thinking of something, he brightened. "I don't suppose you know how to get back to Tokyo, do you?"

HR.

Giles winced as he stepped backwards, almost losing` his balance on the small wheeled ladder. Grasping the lip of the shelf in front of his face to steady himself, he glared at the encyclopedias whose spines he was staring at, willing them to straighten themselves out.

Deciding yet again that he wasn't likely to suddenly gain telekinetic power over paper, he carefully reached up, removing one of the bulky volumes and sliding several others over so that he could put it back into place. Reaching out for another misplaced volume, he was surprised by a voice suddenly intruding into his piece and quiet. "Giles, you here?"

His startled jump managed to send him, and the book he was holding, free of the ladder, hitting the ground feet first with a bone jarring impact. "Hey, nice jump." He turned, noting Buffy leaning against the shelf nearby.

"Yes, I, um, meant to do that," the Brit muttered, reaching up to adjust his glasses, where the jolt had knocked them slightly askew. The room fell into an awkward silence for a moment, as the Watcher wasn't sure what to say. Though he'd seen his Slayer twice since she'd barged into his apartment on Sunday, deliberately provoking his hangover, he hadn't really been able to get a real idea of her mental state either time.

"I wonder if I should start off by saying I'm disappointed in you," Buffy began, and then in a quite deliberate move, she reached up to adjust non-existent glasses. "A Slayer has to be able to trust her Watcher, or the relationship between them breaks down."

"Was that supposed to be... a British accent?" the Watcher asked, before catching himself.

"Hmm, yes, indubitably," Buffy replied, managing to stay completely deadpan for a moment before letting out a small grin. "You know, I've always wanted to do that."

Giles paused for a moment, choosing his words carefully. Of course, after attempting that, and opening and closing his mouth several times, he just blurted, "Buffy, I know that what you heard about the Cruciamentum was a shock, and I don't expect you to fully trust me again, but I was only trying to keep you safe and..."

"Giles, I get it, all right?" Buffy interrupted. "I heard most of your explanation to Mom yesterday, remember?" The man winced, not wanting to recall that conversation terribly much. "Still," the Slayer's attitude turned serious in an instant, "If I ever hear you say 'I kept it from you for your own good,' or anything similar in the future, I'm burning your books."

The librarian winced, wondering if the girl realized exactly how serious that threat was. Actually, he was pretty sure she did. "I understand," he nodded.

"Great! So how about we do a bit of hand to hand work before I go home?" Buffy asked, sounding unusually cheerful.

"I thought you were usually training with Ranko now?" Giles asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, well she had some other things to do, and she asked Willow to help instead..." the blonde winced. "She looked way too happy to be carrying that bag of rocks."

"I... see," Giles replied, confused.

HR.

Aura huffed, forcing her arms to push her up into position again, despite the weight on her back. "So, what does this have to do with defending myself against Vampires?" she asked, throwing an irritable look at the redhead who sat beside her in the empty classroom, casually reading a math book.

"Trying to see how much you can take before passing out," Ranko replied, matter-of-factly, as she set the book down and began jotting something on a sheet of paper. "And that's the math done."

The dark skinned girl winced as her tormentor picked up the math text again, flipping it casually into the air. When it landed squarely on the English and geography books that were stacked on her back, her arms gave out, and she smashed into the floor with a meaty thwack. "I hate you so much," she grumbled, hoping that her nose hadn't been broken.

"Good," Ranko nodded, retrieving her chemistry text. Aura whimpered. That was the largest of the textbooks, and the paper next to it didn't look that full. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself back up.

"Why is me hating you a good thing?" she asked, attempting to distract Ranko, so that she would have some extra time before the weight increased.

"Because it means I'm doin' this right," the redhead replied. "You wanna learn how ta defend yourself against stuff that wants to eat you, so I've got to do it fast. Doin' it fast means doin' it like the old man."

"I see," Aura said slowly, blinking as sweat dripped into her eyes. "Something tells me I wouldn't have liked this old man much."

Ranko nodded. "Most people don't."

"I get your logic, but I still hate you," Aura eventually replied, after a few more push ups.

"Just try and keep the inevitable revenge outside school hours," the redhead responded, continuing with her work.

Aura considered snorting, but decided that interrupting her breathing that dramatically at the moment would be a bad idea. "I'm not going to screw up my grades just to annoy you," she huffed. "That's what getting Cordy to take you shopping again is for."

Ranko grimaced, before the science book landed on Aura's back half way through a push up, sending her into the ground again. "Gee, thanks."

HR.

Quentin Travers watched, approving, as the girl in front of him ran through several basic Slayer training exercises, her speed and power rather impressive, though she seemed to be showing off a bit, as was evidenced by the several shattered training dummies nearby.

"Very nice, Kendra," he complimented, standing and walking towards her as she finished off her most recent routine. "You're definitely the new Slayer."

"Of course," the girl said, nodding. The elder Watcher noted, somewhat surprised, that she hadn't even broken a sweat, despite the past hour's exertions, and the Jamaican heat which, to him, was nearly intolerable.

"I think I've seen all I need," he said. "Could you go upstairs and prepare? I'd like to leave early tomorrow morning, so that we can set up in Sunnydale."

The dark skinned girl nodded again, turning and leaving the practice room. She brushed past her Watcher in the doorway, not seeming to notice him. "So, you're going to take her?" Zabuto asked, stepping into the room.

"I really don't see what you're worried about, Mr. Zabuto," Travers responded. "Yes, the girl's rather exuberant and confident, but I would hardly call those sins."

The Jamaican man shook his head, and then gestured at the broken dummies behind him. "Before becoming a Slayer, Kendra never would have done that," He noted. "Her training focused on control and efficiency."

"So, she's showing off a little with her new strength," the older Watcher shrugged. "You worry far too much, Samuel."

The Field Watcher rubbed his forehead. "Mr. Travers, you are more experienced and higher ranked than I am, but I say this now. I strongly advise against you taking Kendra to Sunnydale."

"Duly noted," Travers said, and turned to leave the room.

HR.

"Goddamned sassafrassin boot lickin..." Spike growled, letting the metallic door to his and Drucilla's warehouse home slam with a satisfying clang, before stomping across the room and slumping into a chair.

"Spike, dear, you've disturbed Edith," his love rebuked, from where she lay on the bed combing her doll's hair.

"Well then, tell Edith to grow a pair," the blond replied, staring up at the ceiling, and letting the bag he was carrying in one hand fall to the floor.

"That wasn't nice," Drucilla responded, pouting slightly, before her eyes rested on the bag. "But I'll forgive you if you got me something pretty."

Spike shot up in the chair, looking alarmed. "That's not for you, Dru!" he snapped, hurriedly.

"I bet it's a surprise, isn't it?" The female vampire frowned. "I hate surprises." Leaping to her feet, she stepped across the room quickly, and opened the bag, revealing a large plastic bottle full of dark liquid. "Ooh, you drained me a snack, you're so thoughtful."

Spike opened his mouth, then stopped, glaring up at the ceiling. "You know what? Go ahead. You're going to find out no matter what, that's just how my luck's goin' lately."

Drucilla gave him an odd look, even for her, before unscrewing the top of the bottle and taking a pull. Her expression went through several stages, before settling on puzzlement. "Cow's blood?"

"Hey, the butcher said it's pig's blood!" Spike replied, as though he'd been offended.

"No..." Drucilla shook her head. "Definitely cow blood. Remember Madrid?"

Spike scowled, grabbing the bottle and taking his own swig. "That bloody..." he growled, vamping out and almost crushing the container in his hand.

"That's too bad," Drucilla replied consolingly, "But why did you want pig's blood, exactly?"

"I didn't really want it," the male vampire replied. "I've just been having the worst damned luck with food lately. First that guy with the iron skin, then the corpse girl... D'ya know, tonight I tracked down this nice, innocent little kindergarten teacher." He shook his head, irritated, "Damned bitch turned out to be wearing cross earrings and a crucifix pendant! that I didn't notice until I had my fangs in 'er throat and one cross pressed against my cheek!"

"Aw, poor boy," Drucilla responded, bending down and running a hand across his cheek, gently caressing the small burn mark there. "Want me to kiss it better?"

"I wanna go kill that scammin' butcher and drink 'im dry, that's what I wanna do," Spike growled, but was distracted when the dark haired vampire leaned over, beginning to nibble on his ear. "Though I suppose I can do that tomorrow."

HR.

Quentin Travers sighed, straightening the tie of his suit, and trying not to notice the girl who had taken the center of their two bedroom hotel suite's living room as a martial arts practice space. The girl's dedication was rather admirable, though he'd had quite the entertaining time getting her onto the plane that took them from Jamaica to LAX. For some reason, she'd wanted to ride in the baggage compartment.

"Kendra, I'm going to go talk to the local Watcher, Perhaps I can gather new information on our target," the man said, looking over his shoulder as the girl appeared to be doing some form of complex, and painful looking, handstand behind him.

"Aren't you worried about the demon's apparent brainwashing ability?" she asked, flipping forward to her feet.

"I've brought a few artifacts with me," the Watcher replied, tapping a pocket which held a small amulet. "It shouldn't be an issue."

"All right, then I will patrol tonight while you gather information?" the girl asked, walking over to the window on one side of the room and looking out on the suburbs of Sunnydale in the early afternoon sunlight.

Travers nodded. "If you see Smith, don't engage her right away," he ordered. "No need to give away any advantages I might be able to figure out."

"I will be able to handle her," Kendra responded, sounding somewhat offended.

Travers chuckled. "I'm sure you will, but there's no need to take unnecessary risks."

The Slayer didn't respond, though the Watcher was certain that she understood his reasons. She had been trained well since birth, after all, unlike the Summers girl. Checking his appearance one last time, Travers turned to the phone, dialing a number.

HR.

"I don't like this," Giles muttered, pacing in front of the library's central research table, as Jenny sat at it, arranging several books and printouts. "First they sent a cleanup team, and now Quentin Travers is showing up and asking questions?"

"Well, at least it's that rather than another team," the computer science teacher offered. "Maybe now that they've shot first, they're willing to ask questions."

"Possible," the Watcher conceded. "I wish Nodoka were here for this."

"Well, she's a little... fragile right now," Jenny said, trying to be diplomatic. "A Council interrogation probably isn't what she needs."

The Brit sighed, before forcibly sitting himself down at the table next to the dark haired woman and helping prepare the material, everything either of them could dig up on the cursed springs of Jusenkyo and Chi manipulation, most of which was in ridiculously ancient Chinese. "I just hope Travers is proficient in old Mandarin."

HR.

"You know," Buffy said, as she leaned back in her chair at the Bronze, watching the band on stage, "I love it when there's someone else to cover my patrols."

"You've informed us of that before," Xander replied, though he couldn't help but grin a little. The extra relaxation that the blonde had been able to indulge in since Ranma had started working with them was really starting to show, as she was a lot less stressed in general... at least when revelations about Slayers, death rituals and curses weren't being dropped on her head.

"We really should be taking the time to study, you know," Willow responded, where she was in her usual position, both Buffy and Xander's notebooks spread out next to her own, a bowl of ice cream sitting next to them.

"Hey," Buffy said, perking up in her chair and looking around. "That guy, does he look a bit too seventies to you?"

Both Xander and Willow followed their friend's gaze, tracking a teenager who was weaving his way through the crowds quickly, tugging at his shirt's large collar as though it were too tight. "He's undead or his mother dresses him funny," the brown haired boy confirmed.

"Looks like he's trying to avoid something," the Slayer noted. "Ranma's probably going to chase him in here." The non-powered teenagers watched as Buffy withdrew a small stake from her bag, moving it so that it would be hard to see past her forearm. "Think I'll go take care of it."

"Some night off," Willow grumbled, but didn't really bother looking up from the homework she'd gone back to after checking out the vamp.

Seconds later, she heard several loud exclamations of "Watch it!" and "What the hell are you doing, you psychopath!" She blinked, rather surprised, as she was pretty sure Buffy wouldn't be that obvious. She wasn't sure about Ranma, but he seemed to know what he was doing.

Looking over again, she saw the crowd rapidly parting around the vampire and Buffy, to reveal a dark skinned girl, carrying a stake openly in one hand, and marching towards the undead creature casually.

"Damn it, how the hell..." the Vampire complained, looking between the newcomer and the only other person who was still nearby, apparently figuring out that Buffy was also a threat.

The new girl didn't respond, her hand seeming to blur before the vampire vanished into a cloud of dust. Across the room, a pudgy nerd gulped as he eyed the stake that was stuck halfway into the wall three inches from his head.

Walking up to the newcomer, Buffy shook her head. "Real subtle," she observed, wryly.

END.

It's said war - war never changes. Fanfics do, through the drives that break. The two authors lost draft after draft of the chapter, until screaming fits were had by all. Eventually, it was cobbled back together, ready for consumption by the masses, but neither of the authors were sure it could hold up.

Only time, and reviews, would tell if the chapter, and the overly long Fallout joke, were done for good.


End file.
